


Sense and Sensibility

by liverose



Series: Thought and feeling [10]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alchemy, Angst and Feels, Bad Decisions, Banter, Brother-Sister Relationships, Burlesque, Children, Dialogue Heavy, Difficult Decisions, Drama & Romance, Dream Sex, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Face Punching, Family Feels, Fate & Destiny, Gift Exchange, Improper Use of Axii (The Witcher), Long-Distance Relationship, Lost Love, Miscommunication, Monster of the Week, Multiple Orgasms, Near Death Experiences, Necromancy, Oral Sex, Oxenfurt (The Witcher), Restaurants, Terminal Illnesses, Vampires, Wiedźmin | The Witcher-Typical Bathing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:34:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29023530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liverose/pseuds/liverose
Summary: Geralt finds a world that already seems at arms length makes less and less sense after the loss of the woman he loves. He finds some in a sorceress he is better off steering clear of as well as an ally in a force he vehemently opposes, destiny. Geralt is adapting to survive, changing, if his love returns to him will they even recognize one another.-aka-My universe's take on season one.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Original Female Character(s), Jaskier | Dandelion/Countess de Stael
Series: Thought and feeling [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1635448
Comments: 9
Kudos: 6





	1. The dead don't rise for dreamers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is part of an ongoing series. It can read be read alone (anything can be read alone if you read it) but it will make far more sense if you read parts 1,4,6, 8 and 9.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Lewis Capaldi for the song leaving my love behind

"You're taking me for a ride Ovid. I am in no such mood." Geralt was rotating his shoulder double checking that the Cemetaur wound was workabley healed to set out out again. He had left his room and listened to the man prattle longer than his patience would allow.  
"No you are only capable of three moods Vedymin, always. Mad, morose or masocistic. Yet your moods are not why I bear your company, not to mention your shedding and slobbering through my home."  
"Hmm" Ovid loved to reference the witcher as something of a creature with mange, he had a feeling the elf used the backwater term Vedymin because it sounded close to vermin. Though diplomacy and charm were rarely traits required of a necromancer. The time in Geralt's life when such words bothered him had long since passed but every once in a while when Ovid would whistle at him like a dog, in the back of his head he could hear it.  
' _A person.'_ When in one of his more masocistic moods he had heard her say his name. _'Geralt.'_ Though that had been months ago. It had motivated him as much as it haunted him, made him tolerate the intolerable elven necromancer.  
"Now this is the last thing I need. Eat something before you're off-"  
"That's what you said when you asked for the heart of a succubus and that was two trips ago. Now this?" Did Katakans even have eyelashes? He knew the had patches of hair, knew them to have claws at the end of their gangly limbs, fangs dead center of their Illproportionate faces but he'd never taken the time to get lost in one's eyes nor did he think any witcher had before him. "Why not ask for it's foreskin." Least that was flesh.  
"That was the first joke you've made in the the months you've been here. At first I thought you had regressed to nothing more than barks."  
"Hmm." Geralt's face pinched as if his palm had hit hot iron.  
"That's a good thing my friend."  
"I'm not here to make light." He didn't want to joke, didn't want to laugh or smile, that was time wasted. "Nor to make friends." Geralt stood somehow more angry than his ever constant. "What is the next last thing Ovid? How many more beasts minding their own must I-"  
"What's the difference between a grave digger and a Vedymin Geralt? Both do the unsavory, both end days smelling of shit and death but-"  
"Make me a list Ovid." He wanted a plan a purpose, not to solve a riddle.  
"Vedymin need for work, more and more, soon there won't be a need for your kind at all. Grave diggers-"  
"Could the Katakana . . . Eyelashes be swapped out for a full Nosferat skull?" Geralt was also not in search of an economics lesson.  
"No! See that is what you're not getting! Though I suppose it's not asked of you to get-"  
"I'll only return here once more Ovid. Make it count." Geralt was finding himself snarling more and more lately, his teeth gnashing at air at the smallest provocation. That wasn't who he was. ' _Wasn't who I **was** . . . Am . . . I am this now.'_ He was not the neutral clear minded witcher who kept his emotions and morals in check any longer, he'd given that up, finding it to slow him down. Geralt had slept little if at all for several months and it left him ever on the edge of snapping. Ovid was in no way helping the witcher turned bear trap.  
"Impatience, un house broken-"  
"Ovid you'll need a grave digger all your own if you continue to puff your chest." He needed Ovid, needed his magic, he did not have to like him, respect him.  
"My point was! If it was so easy to starve off death, you'd have a harem of immortal wargs just-" Ovid had a hand at his throat, Geralt shoved him, forced the sentient scarecrow into the farthest wall of his hut. This was who Geralt was now, barely contained rage. If he had his empath at his side she'd likely say something to the effect of rage being any easy emotion, a loud one, could drown out any sad soft voices in the back of his head. Rage made you run, loss left you languid. He didn't though and no such self reflection happened.  
"She is not a dog."  
"She isn't _anything_ and will be nothing so long as you gripe and drag your feet at my reasonable requests." To Ovid's credit he didn't expect anything more out of the witcher and batted very few eyes so long as Geralt returned with whatever trophy he requested.  
"A katakana eyelashes and what?" Geralt spoke passed clenched teeth.  
"The tongue of a babe of her kind. Human should do fine."  
"I won't kill a child."  
"If bringing back the dead took no sacrifice Geralt, grave diggers would want like Vedymin. Only working when no one else could be bothered for the trouble and the stench."  
"Does . . ." Geralt squeezed slightly at Ovid's throat. "Do not philosophize on this answer Ovid. Yes or no. Does the . . . Babe have to be living? Will a tongue from a corpse do?" Digging up some grieving mother's child, defiling the dead was not much kinder, not a fetch Geralt would normally even entertain but he would do anything to hear his name again, to feel a person worthy of home and love again. _'Would she bear to look at me?'_ He looked at his hand and squeezed tighter, angry at what he had allowed himself to become, unable to stop it. _'Will she come back to anything worth . . .'_ He shook his head. _'Think of everything get nothing done. Bring her back.'_  
"Fresh. No longer than a week with the worms."  
"Hmm." Geralt dropped Ovid. For a moment it looked as if he would punch the wall but it wasn't a masocistic moment, he didn't want to bust a knuckle, instead he just splaid a palm against the wood, collecting himself for a deep breath.  
"Babe bit I get, even gets me a bit blushed. Starting up a plight? Save the Katakans?"  
"No." Geralt's face dropped, neck losing all it's rigidity.  
"Then why offer a swap? Because you don't feel willing to bother with a higher vampire?"  
"No." He'd collected to date a Cemetaur liver, a succubus heart, a godling's hair, a gallon of royal griffin blood, three werewolf hides, a pair of banshee ears, the womb of a water hag, what was an eyelash or two more?  
"Then do you mind sharing why you'd question my wisdom Vedymin?"  
"I mind." Geralt grunted as he picked up his swords from their resting place by the fire. "I'll be back once more Ovid."  
"She will forgive the blood on your hands Geralt. This is a profession of love."  
"This is the desperate act of a mad man." Geralt slammed the door behind him.

Oxenfurt was always a punch to Geralt's senses but after going months purposefuly avoiding civilization it was dizzying, disorienting. _'Why here?'_ His eyes were tired and somewhat strained, that was the excuse he used for keeping his eyes at his feet, why he stuck to the shadows. That wasn't the reason. Fatigue had little to do with that nor why he'd questioned Ovid's wisdom. He heard it and his face whipped up on reflex, it was a laugh like hers but the face was all wrong, too round and freckled, oval very blue very human eyes, she looked very basically pleased, no coy curl in her smile. Yet a witcher's eyes scanned when started, he saw the back of someone's head, long red hair like hers, straight as an arrow waiting for a hand to grasp it, yet that person was too tall, nearly as tall as Geralt, he wouldn't have to lean in and loom the way Anima liked. _'Cut.'_ He shook his head, remembering the sound of his own blade being sliced through Anima's hair, Nehalenia giving it a soft kick with a barefoot as it landed. _'Cut it out.'_ He shook his head again and continued onward. He easily saw her where she wasn't and he had been skirting cities for months to stop the cruelty of his own mind. That wasn't it either though. Not entirely. He entered the alchemy to the sound of music. _'Not him.'_ Some blonde female troubadour had the place buzzing, something jaunty something fun, Anima's sort of music. For a moment he wondered what he would have done if it had been his bard, his best friend, if Jaskier had been playing the crowd. Would he allow the silly man with no sense of personal space run up, hug and simultaneously berate him? Let him laugh and joke, tell stories and convince the witcher to down one too many drinks? Would he be selfish and allow the bard to comfort him, more traitorous still distract him even for a moment from his goal? Or was he too far gone to go back, would he remain who he currently was? Lash out at the bard. Shout or darker yet strike him? He had gone over that day every subsequent one after. ' _Had to save Jaskier.'_ If he hadn't, gone after the bard, fought Gaetan, he would have been faster, just a hair faster and he could have killed Fringilla, killed Tissia, killed the merchant, painted the forest red so Anima didn't do it in their stead. _'Wasn't his fault.'_ Whose was it? Or was there no one worthy of wrath, had it simply been destiny?

  
"Witcher!" It was Stjepan the Innkeeper of the alchemy. "Alone are we?"  
"Yes." He was alone and he was to blame, he was a witcher, he should have kept his head in the fight, should have used all he'd been taught to protect his family in a moment he'd been warned about for years, but he had turned his head at the sound of her voice and for it Anima died.  
_'Geralt.'_ His failures taunted him, called out to him by name.

-The Void-

"Geralt." Anima watched the empty jam jar spin and stutter in place, it had a mind of it's own. "More and mores as of late." Not a mind, a heart. She'd had ages alone to figure out what this was, what it represented. This jar was a visual manifestation of Geralt's heartbeat, she was chasing after it in hopes to find her way home. She had plenty of time to get philosophical about it, perhaps the heartbeat was the intangible air inside the jar and the glass was a representation of her hold on it. She had died, her own heart had stopped, she'd been too far to recover it, feel her pulse thump through her wrist and thus she couldn't simply tether, the chain between her and her anchor had snapped, she was out at sea, a drift, yet she had something, will to live, hope and a stupid fucking jar of air to follow, not all was lost. She noticed some time into her never ending hike that the jar moved independently, would sometimes speed up or slow down, change directions. Yet more and more it would spiral and rattle in place. It still was a sound worth following, in part because it was the only sound. Yet it cracked and chimed at an unpleasant pitch. She had no way of knowing but she thought that to mean Geralt's heart was hurting. "I'm trying Geralt I swear I am." The jar stopped and rolled on, just as it had all the times before it. "I'll come home Geralt I swear. I aim to keep you." She really did hope all her conjecture was right and she hadn't simply lost her mind to the vast white void.

-The Physical-  
_'I aim to keep you.'_ If he held his breath and tuned out his senses he could trick himself into thinking she was really there.  
"Witcher?"  
"What?!" Yet he couldn't hold his breath forever.  
"Be needing a bed?"  
_'You and this bed Geralt!'_ He heard her laugh again, remembered her jokingly checking him for a fever.  
"Yes." An awful idea with no chance but to hurt in the end hit him, yet he was in a masocistic mood.  
"Should we be expecting to-"  
"No." Geralt took the key in exchange for coin and as he made his way upstairs.

The key jammed, caught and fumbled, the lock refused to budge. Eventually the door did relent, did open, the room was occupied. "Some sort of mix up. You've got the wrong room gramps. Did you get confused and lose you way? Is your child in the hall. Anyone lose an eldrly-" Geralt had not missed university students.  
"Switch rooms with me." Geralt held out the key to a room he knew to be three over.  
"Why in the hell would I move all my shit-"  
"You're going to switch rooms with me." Geralt should have felt guilty, using axii for personal gain, it was unbecoming, dishonest, he couldn’t be asked to care about morals. They were nothing but vines meant to trip up witchers mid motion, he believed that now.  
"We should switch rooms." The young man made to walk out the door.  
"Take your things." It's not that he cared for the students belongings but axxi didn't last forever and if the young man interrupted him with knocking Geralt would snap, would do something even a morally backrupt man would lose sleep over. He couldn't lose more sleep.

Faint, terribly faint, port wine, inkwells and fluids vessles of the biological facet had spilled on the bed, floors and walls of this particular room in the years since he'd last passed through it's doors. But faint meant existent and Geralt was nothing if not focused on the scent. _'Dried fruit and cracking tea leaves.'_ He chased it, fell into it, face first into the mattress breathing in a hot muffled breaths of the bed he had shared with her years ago. He eventually turned onto his back and just laid there, his eyes fought to stay open but what was one more loss? "Miss you." Not a question never a question. A stupid statement, to no one, he was alone. For a moment he felt warm, felt a moment of peace, he started to drift.  
_'You're chasing rest Witcher.'_ It had the same sarcastic yet paradoxical softness as it had the first time he'd heard it. He felt warm muscles go heavy, he'd planned to speak to the local medic, there was a woman who had witnessed the attack right downstairs yet he didn't move, didn't act, he did nothing, he slept, worse yet he dreamed.

"Do you though?" His eyes shot open and she was there, sat right in front of him in some ugly cracked leather lounge chair. "Geralt?"  
"Anima?" He winced at how wounded he sounded but he couldn't undo words, he made a bid it sit up, to stand, but he couldn't, not a single limb lifted.  
"Do you?" She smiled at him but there was something sharp in her grin, something that cut like daggers. "Geralt do you?"  
"Yes." They badgering sounded like a question she wanted affirmed, he couldn't crawl let alone walk to her so he gave her all he could. "Anima please . . . Let me-"  
"Doesn't seem it. That you've missed me." The sigh was loud and over done.  
"Anima please. I'm trying." He could not move. Why couldn't he move?  
"No need to lie Geralt. I forgive you." Some of the sharpness faded, she looked almost concerned. "You know that right? I don't blame you? In my last breath I forgave you? You can't think anything different can you?"  
"Need to lie? What did I-" He refused to acknowledge her question because he couldn't give her the answer she wanted. He did not want her upset with him, did not want her to leave.  
"That you're trying. Here you are toes to throat in Oxenfurt pillows what sort of try is that."  
"I can't move." But she was right. Why had he laid down? Why had he thought he had earned rest when he hadn't accomplished his task. It didn't matter the task was near impossible, dangerous, both morally and quite legally banned, his task was to get her back and convince her to have him again. He'd accomplished Jack shit.  
"No?" She was standing.  
"Don't leave!" He shouted all the air out of his lungs. He wasn't moving, wasn't trying, what claim did he have to make any requests.  
"No. Can't just yet." She was approaching him slowly, stalking the bed. "Unlike you, I fulfill my purpose."  
"Anima I'm sorry." He had nothing else to offer. His eyes grew larger as he watched her tunic rise, expose her skin to him. "Don't." He knew where this was going and while his loins craved it desperately, he hadn't earned it and thus didn't want it. "Please Anima wait . . . Wait till I find you. . . Till I can . . . I will make it up to you."  
"Wait?" Her trousers were sliding down, over hips thighs and ankles, for all his protests he should have looked away but didn't, his eyes were glued to her. "How long Geralt?" She was laid out on him, grinding down against him and Geralt let out a groan pleased and pained for being as such. "I know what you want." She kissed at his neck, right at his pulse. "What you need." She was undoing his trousers, smiling not cruel, simply knowing as he sprang lose hard and indeed needy. "I always give you what you ask for Geralt." Her hand glided as if their skin had never spent a moment apart and while he could not will his hips to or away from her, he groaned again, he wasn't stone, it was doing exactly what intended. "More than that Geralt." His eyes unable to expand any further rolled to find room in his skull as she fell, swallowed, cooked him. "I give you everything Geralt." She rocked up and down, rhythmic, making the pressure in him climb at a predictable rate. "And ask for nothing in return." He wasn't moving, touching coaxing or caressing, he was just taking her ride all the way to the top, growling with lust and languish. "I expect nothing Geralt. You can't fail when you never were expected to succeed."  
"I will . . .Anima I will." Her hand had been playing at his abdomen, tracing at ribs then he felt them dance up, felt her fingernails dig into his chest, holding him in place. "I promise. I swear Anima." He begged to see belief in her eyes, pleasure, anything, yet her eyes were cold, lifeless, detached. This wasn't her, it was his head, a phantom of his failure but he let himself have a fantasy to fight.  
"Don’t over think, just be selfish. Take, they got my blood but you took everything else Geralt." Her pace quickened and he could feel his chest pound, veins tighten, he felt ill gained release stampeding through him.  
"No." He had wanted to be good for her, better, best. He had wanted to give everything to her and he had failed. Taken away her safety, her comfort and lastly her life. He'd taken them all as his own, promised to protect them, improve them and he had failed.  
"It was worth it Geralt." He couldn't move, couldn't stop it.  
"Shut. . ." He couldn't yell at her, blame her for being cruel. Here he was still gaining, still taking from what was merely a memory, he was selfish beyond reality. "I'll fix it Anima. Make it-"  
"I love you Geralt, always you. It was enough, you were enough." Like loose snow he gave way, washed out. "Won't even say it back?" She panted from her perch.  
"I can't." He tried again to move but couldn't.  
"Won't." She started churning again. "Won't even try." Overstimulion made his blood feel fizzy, uncomfortable but still pleased.  
"That's not it." He clenched his eyes shut.  
"Must not be trying enough. Do you need more darling?"  
"Yes." He didn't, felt selfish and sick for saying otherwise but he knew this dream, knew it's trappings. If he said no she'd get off of him, leave him, he'd be alone again.  
"Good. Just feel good, be happy Geralt. That's all I want." It felt good and Geralt hated himself for it. Anima was dead he shouldn't feel good at all.

\- The void -  
"For fucks sake how many legs does the beast you're hunting have Geralt!" Anima was running, sprinting, panting as she chased after the jar. She smiled, knowing her witcher likely did not have a grin all his own, yet hoping he was doing something that called to or better yet pleased him. Perhaps he was hunting harpies or racing Roach, she hoped it was something distracting. Gods what she wouldn't do for a simple distraction. A thought, a memory, a feeling, a pop of color, anything. All she had was this unwinnable race chasing down an empty jar. _'I think I might've.'_ Her smiled dipped lightly. ' _Gone crazy.'_ Yet still she chased. "Will you want a loon Geralt?" She kept at it.

\- Geralt's dream-  
"Say it . . . Please say it Geralt." She was lathering him with kisses, his arms, his neck, his shoulders and chest, all the while bobing up and down. "You with me Geralt?" Her palm swatted lightly at a cheek that had healed up nicely over months.  
"Here." He grunted out, he was sweaty and strung. How long had she been at this? When would she stop? Why couldn't he move? It wouldn't be painful, it'd be absolute bliss if he could hold her, turn her over and give, try and try to make up for his failure. He could get her smiling then, happy, she was dead, he'd never met a happy dead person and he'd met more dead than most. Get her warm, she ran cold, the lifeless ran colder. Safe, she was lost, he wanted get her back to promise to keep her safe. Louder, she never got louder any more, she was always calm and pulled back. It wasn't what he missed most but that didn't mean it wasn't longed for.  
"Does it hurt?" She bit into his pectoral, hard it was meant to hurt, meant to make him flinch, he hadn't, even if he could he wouldn't.  
"Can take it." He didn't want it to be over, for her to leave. "Let me-"  
"You can. You take so well Geralt." He thought maybe he whined at those words. No, the witcher whined like he purred, not quite but close. The praise and scold mixture had him toppling dry and painful. "Take it all love." It went on in a loop like that, her ever moving, him a rotting log. She'd kiss and then speak, ask. "Say it . . . Please say it Geralt."  
"I . . ." It was getting harder and harder to deny her, it hurt more and more. "No." A flurry of kisses and doting then a bite. This one at his neck, it was hard, painful, drew blood. "The katakan." He remembered what he doing before sleep.  
"A vampire?" If wasn't in absolute anguish, wasn't strained and raw he would have smiled, would have been proud that Anima had remembered the creature by name. He used to smile for her, Anima's face would light up when he would mutter some vauge observations or clues at a creature and she would guess correctly. "You're going back. To the way things were, you've gone back to hunting like nothing even-"  
"For you." Geralt tried to shake his head in protest but even that was beyond his scope.  
"What use do I have for a rouge rodent Geralt? I'm dead!"  
"Gonna fix it, necromancer. Be patient just need a few more-"  
"What else?"  
"Huh?" He swallowed hard, he heard her, his ears worked just fine.  
"What else do you need?"  
"A-" His mind was too garbled to deflect even though he knew he aught to. "Tongue." He felt her own drag a trail up his chest, long his throat. "Of a babe. A human-" He choked on the loss, she was off him in a fright.  
"You're going to kill a child Geralt?" He'd never seen her look at him that way, never heard her say his name with such a fear of him.  
"No. I-"  
"This isn't you Geralt! You'd never-"  
"I will do what I have to. I've made peace with that."  
"No you haven't. Liar! Coward! You cheated me! Stole from me and you can't even have the decency to be honest with me?!"  
"Anima I-"  
"Are not remotely at peace Geralt. You can't fool me. Don't insult me like that! How much of your work is undoing messes created by such dark arts?! Don't be a man made a monster by your ambitions." It was Anima's face, it was his conscious.  
"I'll be a monster . . . If it gets you back." He'd only take so much scolding, he snarled what he held to be true.  
"Bring me back just to break me all over?! Is that the fate you've chosen for me? To see what I've done to you?"  
"None of this is-"  
"I thought you loved me Geralt. Why would you hurt me? Kill me twice?!"  
"I do love you! I don't know what else to do. Tell me what to do!" But just like failing in a moment he'd been warned of, he had given in to trappings of a dream he'd already lived. He had said he loved her, admitted it, gave in and then she was gone. Then he was awake. "Fuck." Alone, angry, with damp trousers.

"Why you starin puss peppers?" The woman who had witnessed the Oxenfurt beast was drunk. Perhaps if he had interrogated her first instead of having a lecherous nap he would have found the woman sober.  
"Tell me about the monster." That word wobbled in his head in a new and disorienting way.  
"I'd need another bottle to get through it." She said it snidely but it gave him an idea, doing the unsavory or questionable was easier drunk. He thought to the nearby cemetery, cringing as he wondered if small grave stones meant small graves.  
"I think you'll tell me what I need to know bottle or no bottle."  
"Yes. I will." Again he took the easy way out using axxi to forgo real human interaction. "I was leaving the Inn that night. Might've had a drink . . . Or five. I wasn't hallucinating!"  
"Hmm." The fact she felt the need to assure that was not promising.  
"Something down the alley called me name. It was dark couldn't see much. Wasn't a human of that I'm certain." She wasn't calling him vermin so the snooty tone to her voice went unchecked.  
"What makes you so sure?"  
"I just know." He hated that phrase, if she said she felt it in her bones he wouldn't be able to keep his eyes from rolling. "The thing grabbed me by me skirt but I broke free and ran."  
"That it? You didn't see much." All this torture for nothing. There was no Katakana in Oxenfurt just drunks that couldn't keep their hands to themselves.  
"You don't believe me either do you?! Fuck you! Fuck you all!" His callousness had hurt this woman but he'd have to get used to that, come to peace with it, accept becoming a monster.  
"Stjepan?" He wouldn't waste this trip though, wouldn't leave empty handed.  
"What'll it be?"  
"Wanna get drunk." Didn't want to enjoy it, not vodka, he couldn’t bear to see a stout. "Cheap wine." He wanted the pain of it in the morning.  
"Trouble with the lass? Or did your enterprise go under?" Stjepan was just being a good Innkeep, sociable, Geralt didn't want a shoulder to lean on.  
"Neither." This wasn't for Anima. "Just part of the job." This was so he could forget and do what any witcher would when presented with a task, get his hands dirty.

As he stumbled out of the alchemy, vision blurred, heavy staggering steps taking him where he didn't want to go, his chest felt burnt on acidic wine but the space around him felt cold. There was no one at either side of him, no warm empath twirling circles in the street, no fully drunk bard singing of loose woman not out of key but skirting the line. _'The maids of Vic . . . Vicovaro.'_ That was the last song Jaskier had sung for them when they got good and sauced. His mouth opened, the words slurred out to keep from acknowledging the loneliness. "Once was a maid from Vicovaro.  
Tight at night, she'd be loose com 'morrow.  
Earl-ie in the morning!"

He'd gone searching for Geralt after breaking the heart of everyone he had ever met in Lyria. When he didn't find the witcher, when being alone and heartbroken in a way he hadn't known in years made the world a bit too much to venture, he went to the place that taught him heartbreak in the first place. He'd been purposeless then, a teenager with no passion and no innate attachment to what others expected of him as a viscount. Jaskier had returned to the small kingdom of Densale, maybe relearning the basics could have him master the insurmountable. He returned to the countess who had taught him heartbreak, had made it hurt to the point he had to scratch out the emotion to page or no one would believe him. He sang to her now, tried to explain a heartbreak that spread across not one soul but many, healing wonky and scarred in all of them. "I don't know how we got to where we are.  
So far removed I don't know where to start.  
Cause I've been away for far too long.  
But I implore you please hold on, I beg you please hold on."

-Oxenfurt-  
"Another maid from Vicavaro.  
Ploughed with pleasure drank with sorrow. Till ear-lie in the morning!" Geralt's voice was carrying, eliciting glares, which was good, he deserved them for what he was about to do. He wobbled his way off the grounds in the direction of the cemetery.

-Densale-  
The Countess never heard him, not really, when he was young it was because he didn't have the skills to express himself. In the present it was simply because she couldn't, she pouted accordingly to the sad lyrics but she didn't understand, how could she? How would she know what it was like to find a family and then watch it crumble? Know those you cared for were dead or dying and the blame was spread evenly yet weighted on each of them individually? "Love don't come easy to us.  
And it's killing me to hang on and hope it's enough.  
So I was just wondering.  
Could you tell me is it all a waste of time?  
Are you leaving my love behind?  
Baby say the word and let me know."

-Oxenfurt Cemetery-  
"Our third maid was not demanding.  
Gave it up to any man standing.  
Ear-lie in the morning!" It was crude and crass downright disrespectful, so was everything about this moment. He sat on a tombstone, squinting blurry eyes, staring at names, days of birth, of death, looking for a babe. "Anima I . . . You don't have to forgive me Anima. Don't have to . . . Accept . . . This." He looked down at his own hands. "Just . . . I'll say my peace. I'll . . . Stay away . . . Keep you safe. First things first though. I have to find you. Make sure you're-" A witcher should know, alone, in the dark, in a cemetery, talking to yourself, one is just asking to be attacked by a vampire.

-Densale-  
"I swear that I won't try to change your mind.  
If you're leaving my love behind.  
Baby say the word and let me go." Jaskier's voice got louder carried farther, echoed in the castle's walls, it was a cry, it was sorrow. He knew Anima was gone, Geralt would die chasing her ghost and he was hiding, it was not a hero's tale, it was a song of defeat.

-Oxenfurt Cemetery-  
For a split second Geralt forced his muscle memory to a hault, wasn't a witcher just a man. It had the same result for him as it had for Anima. He didn't unsheath his sword, simply took the tackle, allowed the bite, embraced the pain, the tear at his throat. A split second could be all that was needed. Was he giving up? Was he dying? He'd been cold before, he didn't feel colder. If anything he felt warmer, perhaps that was his blood flooding out. "Geralt?!" He couldn't die, that call wouldn't let him, pulled him from anything, from anywhere.

-Densale-  
"We used to wait up and talk for hours on end.  
And it's got me thinking that lately something's changed.  
Cause I've been feeling, you leaving.  
Cracks in conversations way too long.  
I'm barely holding on." Had he looked hard enough? Or had he looked just enough to satiate the surface obligation? Did he want to find Geralt? For it to be confirmed? His best friend, the person who saw him as more than a jester that knew scales, who valued his well being, his happiness, cared for his opinions despite whether they were right or mattered at all, that man had been snuffed out, burned and blackened. He had called them selfish, called them monsters for wanting that small comfort of love, of home over all else. Now that he felt the pain of losing it he understood their motives but it was days late and crowns short. He had been selfish, been a monster. What would he say to Geralt if he saw him again? "You gotta give me something.  
I swear that I won't try to change your mind.  
If you're leaving my love behind.  
Baby say the word and let me go." He had words, had songs, ballads, he had nothing Geralt would really hear, just like the countess the witcher was out of his reach Jaskier feared this to be an absolute.

-The Void-  
"Geralt?!" This didn't make sense, couldn't be. "What . . . How are you here?"  
"I won't say it." Geralt gurgled a heavy lung of blood.  
"Don't say shit you're dying you idiot!" She ran to him, she'd make sense of this later. "What's . . . Think . . . What can I do. . . What can I do? Geralt . . . You need to get to a healer. I can't tether to you, can't take this pain."  
"Swore." She had swore she wouldn't tether to him. "My bad. . . "  
"You got hurt Geralt. It happens to everyone. Can you stand?"  
"My bad habit. . . Breaking . . ." The inhale sounded like it hurt. "Not yours." He broke promises, not Anima.  
"Is something broke? A rib . . . Your neck? Talk to me Geralt. Keep talking to me please." She watched his eyes go more glossed. "I haven't had a single fucking person to talk to for . . ."  
"Seven months. Been seven months Anima."  
"Seven months! So muster a grunt or hum! Keep fucking talking to me till you get to a healer! Can you do that Geralt? Will you?"  
"Tr-" Geralt's body was latched onto by some monstrosity.  
"The fuck is that!"

-Oxenfurt Cemetery-  
He'd seen it, that green haze, Anima's etheric form. Yet now his view was blocked, he was being clawed at, gnawed on but that was secondary, he needed to be able to see her. "Fuck!" He was still more than a bit drunk, he was wounded and angry, he fumbled for his sword but once he had it, the Katakana was plenty close to be impaled on some clumsy thrusts, the monster died as gracefully as the witcher stood. Geralt held his throat. "Anima?!" He nearly fell right back over as he spun in place. "Anima?!"  
"Here." The green apparition hadn't been a dying man's dream.  
"My . . ." He croaked. "Line." He tripped towards her. "Anima." He reached out and not that he should have expected anything different his had filtered through the form. "Don't go."  
"Geralt . . . You needed to get . . . Are you close to a healer?"  
"Oxenfurt." He stumbled over to the dispatched vampire, crouching down over the corpse. "Huh."  
"What?"  
"Does have eyelashes. Who knew." Even less squeamish than usual Geralt sliced off both the Katakana's upper lids. "Anima I'm . . . Don't lie. . . Please".  
"It's not your fault Geralt. I . . . Think things went as they were supposed to."  
"I said-" He held at his neck wound a bit harder. _'Was I gonna die? Fail again? Who would bring her back?'_ He had to stand, it didn't matter how tired he was. "Don't lie." He stared at Anima's projection for a few blinkless moments. "Miss you." If he did die she should know. "Love you." It didn't hurt to say, or maybe it did and he couldn't tell because everything else hurt.  
"I love you too Geralt. I'm trying to . . . Find you. My body is it-"  
"She has it."  
"Oh." Anima didn't know what that meant for her, for the plan she knew she had but the void had long since robbed from her. She didn't know who had her body. All things to question when her witcher wasn't dying. "Geralt?"  
"Say it again?" He was bleeding out, wasting time, had tasks to complete, it didn't matter, it could wait.  
"Geralt." Still, answering when asked.  
"Look away Anima." He took a few drunken steps towards a small headstone.  
"I will not. Until I see you grimacing as someone sews you-"  
"Need a tounge."  
"Use those super keen ears of yours. You need a fucking healer! Geralt are you drunk?" She didn't remember what he sounded like drunk, honestly she had forgotten his voice until mere moments before.  
"For the . . . Working with a necromancer. To get you back."  
"That won't work Geralt."  
"What?"  
"My body . . . Is moving, heart is beating?"  
"Nehalenia took it. I didn't stop her." Geralt spat.  
_'Nehalenia.'_ Anima was flooded with bits and pieces of memories but she shelfed them, would have all the time for them later.  
"You can't reanimate what's already animated." What she said made sense but Geralt just . . . He didn't want to hear it, witchers were stubborn, he hadn't learned his lesson, what he wanted to believe and what was were not interchangeable.  
"Will figure a way around."  
"Do not dig up a corpse on a hunch Geralt! Let the dead rest."  
"You?! Let you rest?!" He looked down at fresh packed dirt. "I . . . Can't Anima. Will do what I have to this time. Won't-" He hadn't brought a shovel, he got to his knees using a dagger like a spade.  
"You stubborn stooge! If you die-"  
"Won't."  
_'Fuck.'_ She knew the void was driving her mad but she refused to let it pull Geralt into the insanity. _'Reign him in. Give him something small, a goal, a chance to win. I can't just manifest a tounge out of the sky . . ._ ' Oxenfurt, someone had gifted her a book from their library, an alchemy book, that must havr something of use here or else she wouldn't be trying so hard to remember. _'No not the sky the earth!'_ Anima pushed the white noise from her skull, she had read that recipe multiple times over, she'd never used it for a tongue but there was no reason it wouldn't work. "Laetiporus!"  
"What?" Geralt frowned as his blood mixed with the dirt making some miserable sludge.  
"Find yourself to a medic and I will tell you of the chicken of the woods."  
"Had that vision Anima." Geralt if he wasn't so strained, burning at his remaining adrenalin, might've chuckled at the memory.  
"It's an alchemists work around for flesh. Used it to stretch what we had."  
"Hmm." He stopped digging. She was fighting, still, from wherever she was to make him remain a man, keep him from becoming a monster. He had to try, for her he always had to try. "Fine." He gave one more glance at the half dug grave. "Want to be someone you'll . . . Come back to Anima. Need to make it right."  
"Difficult balance. Walk Geralt." She nudged slightly, he tried to hide it but she saw him grin ever so slightly, she had kept him from turning entirely to stone.  
"Had you . . ." He began his way back to Oxenfurt. "To balance me." Staggering actually had him moving faster than walking, though it still was a race against time, he had spilled a good deal of blood. "Now I don't."  
"I'm . . . Lost Geralt . . . Everything is . . . There's nothing here, no point of reference."  
"Sorry." He meant it, why didn't he say it like he meant it? Because sorry didn't mean shit. "You always . . . Got lost easy."  
"But I always found my way home."  
"Hmm." The gates came into view. "I recall it differently. You'd get lost, I found you."  
"Bit of both maybe." Her voice was fading, growing distant.  
"You can be right." Perhaps she was growing upset with him? Leaving him all over again. "Don't go."  
"You called out to me . . . Needed me . . . Don't anymore . . . You're safe. The connection is-"  
"Do! I do need you Anima. I can't-"  
"You . . . " She was flickering disappearing. "Can do anything Geralt."  
"No I-" was she disappearing or was he blacking out?  
"Oi?! You alright?!" Some university student tried to catch the falling witcher.  
"Need . . .Stay . . . Please, let me-"  
"Geralt listen . . ." Green was going, leaving, it had been a brief light in a world of dark. "Get scrapings from a . . . Human tounge." She was still half sold she'd entirely lost it. "Grind up Laetiporus, it's a mushroom, mix the-"  
"Be patient Anima. I'll fix it I swear."  
"Try Geralt. Trying means the world."

He had tried. Went and visited Millie in Orten, the only child he knew to owe him a favor. She had stuck out her tongue and he'd carefully scraped the muscle, only teased he might nick it if she started swearing like a sailor. He'd found Laetiporus, once you knew of the fungus it was hard not to trip over. He had mixed the two, listened to Ovid piss and moan about hacked ingredients getting hacked results. Anima had been right, they couldn't bring her back into a body already breathing and occupied. They had tried a different way, tried to bring her soul into a body that Ovid had been holding on ice and was all to eager to use, for motives not needed to be known by a Vedymin, that hadn't worked either. "Is it the . . . Ingredients?"  
"Not on our end Vedymin." Ovid sounded equal parts exhausted and annoyed. "Could have saved us both a year had you told me part of her soul hadn't parted. I can't work with that." The elf was wiping his hands of this, too weird even for him.  
"What does that mean?" Geralt's chest ached, he hadn't had to do anything for the ritual but an entire year of blood, broken bones and hope had hinged on this moment and again they failed.  
"Part of her soul still lives here. Can't revive what-"  
"Already is animated."  
"What? No . . . Well yes. That and what's torn and tattered. You can't make a sail catch wind if it's got holes." Maybe it was the poor analogy, maybe it was the fact of the matter. Either way Geralt growled, full set of teeth on display and Ovid's throat tensed.

"How is that possible? Is some of her soul still in her body?"  
"How should I know? You asked me to bring back a dead woman . . . That I can do, your woman . . . I don't know _what_ she is . . . _Where_ she is, what's _left_ of her. She's ashes in the wind Vedymin. Where are you going?"  
"If you can't do it I have no reason to stay."  
"But what will you do?"  
"Find another way." He was still alive and Anima still wasn't, he had to try.

"Stop tempting me!" She was going mad, there was no denying it any longer. She kept following the jar, when it rolled when it stuttered and spun, she continued to follow it. Though it was no longer the only option she had. No matter how far she walked, how many months passed it was always right behind her, what she had been shouting at: A bed, an Oxenfurt bed. She remembered Oxenfurt now, she could lay down, rest, remember fond light moments, she could live in those moments. That wasn't trying though, wasn't fighting, she had to go forward, backwards was dangerous, backwards lead to stuck, she couldn't give in, had to trek forward further into the white. "Saw him once, only took seven months. I'll see him again, in no time. I'll find my way home Geralt, you'll find me. Little bit of both."


	2. Ballads and balled fists

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Lewis Capaldi for the song lost on you.

"Lately I'm getting lost on you.  
You got me doing things I never thought I'd do.  
Never spent so long on a losing battle.  
But lately giving up don't seem to matter." The countess asked this often, a performance within a performance. His hips moved like a well oiled metronome, never missing a beat, going through the motions. A metronome was always on, performed a task but never was described as passionate, there was no passion here.  
"Such a song Julian, moves me so." She writhed into him. She'd been requesting that same song as of late, he couldn’t tell if she thought it was a song of them and the decade that passed them by or if it was to challenge the bard, keep that pace, continue to please but sing a song born of hurt. He was an entertainer, he did not deny a request.

Geralt had seen Anima three times since Oxenfurt, he could see her when he was in the process of dying, not quite dead, when he needed reminding to get back up and try again. The first time had been almost on the year mark since he'd lost her. He'd failed at finding a cauldron that didn't exist and had taken out the foul mood that perfect storm caused on a mage who picked a fight he shouldn't have, it had not been a wise choice. "Geralt?!"  
"Am I dying again Anima?" He sounded so fucking tired, he _was_ so fucking tired.  
"You seem a bit . . . Burried. Can you move?" The mage had collapsed a whole catacomb in on the witcher.  
"Can." He pushed at boulders crushing in at his chest. "Anima . . . Is it . . . The void? Or is it some place different? Do you know? Just give me a clue. How do I get to you?"  
"Well I'm not wherever you are currently. Keep moving Geralt. I know it hurts but-"  
"Can take it." He made aard with a broken hand. "Are you waiting?"  
"No Geralt. _Waiting_ is for suckers. I'm trying, just like you. We have to keep trying."  
"Can't sleep. Can you sleep?" His head was loose and thoughts came and went.  
"No Geralt. I don't sleep. I move. Keep moving Geralt please. Don't give up."  
"Not." Geralt grunted as he made his feet hold him. "Trying. Is it cold where you are? It's cold down here." He had remembered her asking for him to talk last time, he wanted to give her any small relief he could, yet his lungs hurt, one might've been punctured.  
"It's not cold really . . . I'm not in pain. I-"  
"Don't feel anything?" Feelings were what made her, what moved her, she had none of that.  
"I still love you Geralt. I feel that." She could coo from beyond, it was endearing, it was haunting, it hurt.  
"Miss you." As he climbed a ledge the air grew thin, hot, poisonous. "Love you." He would say it over and over once he found her, make up for the time he should have but didn't. His nails broke as he pried a stone free, letting some cool outside air hit his face. "Don't go. Still need you."  
"I love you Geralt. Hasn't changed. Won't. You don't need me to live. That hasn't changed either. Remember that."  
"Know." He wasn't a youth throwing himself off a cliff, he was a witcher taking calculated risks to get the results he was after.

-Densale-  
"Play our song Julian." The countess was holding a banquet. Jaskier was not a guest, he was a bard, an entertainer, this song wasn't one meant for crowds, his throat pinched slightly but he never denied a request. Who was he to deny her?  
"Everyday I'm a slave to the heartache.  
And you're wasting away every night.  
I don't wanna leave you lonely.  
But I've run out of love this time."

The second time was maybe six months later. Geralt made a calculated decision, a decision that he needed to know she was still there, somewhere, anywhere. He still wasn't that desperate cliff heeled youth, he didn't wish for death, yet he knew it worked, was the only thing he knew to do so, dying got him close. He missed having her close. He took too many potions, parried too few of the fiend's gorging thrusts, he still killed the beast, killed it faster than if he had been cautious and it got him close, twice the better. "Anima?"  
"Geralt fucking stop! Don't do this! Don't slide down this slope!"  
"Can't stop Anima. Keep moving keep trying. This works." It was simple, it was tested, it was dangerous, perfect witcher logic.  
"Not if it fucking kills you Geralt!"  
"Won't die. Will keep on going and going and -"  
"You're hurting yourself on purpose Geralt! I . . . Won't come next time Geralt. I won't facilitate this. Do you hear me? Won't have you hurt because of me!"  
"You will." He gave a jaded snort "I'll ask for you and you'll come, because I need you."  
"Fuck you Geralt! Don't make me the sword you fall on! Please!" Was she crying? Like an ice bath he sprung to life, gasping pawing the space she had occupied, _had_ , she was gone.

"Don't . . .Anima I'm sorry." He was torturing her with his neediness, his weakness. "I just . . . I miss you." He'd become someone who hurt her, he'd promised to never be that person. "I love you." He'd pushed her away before she could hear that. _'I'll try harder . . . Be stronger. I . . . Won't fail you again Anima. I won't manipulate your . . . Don't give up please.'_

-The void-  
"You fucking asshole! I . . . Geralt I'm fucking trying! Isn't that enough! Do you not believe me? You think I'm up here fucking crocheting? Why . . . I'm not a god damn sadist! If this will bring you nothing but pain it's not fucking worth it!" She was feeling something outside of longing outside of love. It was anger, it was sadness, it was energy with nowhere to go, she had met her wits end. _She_ had nowhere to go, nothing to do, she barely existed and that wasn't fair. She wanted to be able to do more than walk in circles getting her nowhere, she wanted to be able to shake Geralt, yell at him, hold him, anything. "Useless peice of junk!" A spontaneous movement for a spontaneous emotion, she picked up the jar and threw it. Instead of it disappearing into the chasm of white, it shattered as if it hit something, broke into pieces that rained down just feet from her. "What?" She walked a few paces forward, placed out a palm. "A wall?" Her hand tingled at feeling . . .anything even parodying solid. "The end?" She looked down to the shattered glass. "Shit!" Her one link to the real world and she had broken it. She reached down to pick up a shard and something unexpected happened. Her finger sliced, she bled, for the first time in over a year she felt it, or imagined it, at the very least remembered it existed. "My pulse."

-Densale-  
"It will sound better as a duet don't you agree? Two voices are better than one." The countess was taking it from him, it was hers now, his words, his world was hers now. "Go on Adrien." She winked at her newest bard.  
"I-" The price of hiding in someone's home was you answered to them, you listened to their rules. Jaskier was someone with rules now, limitations. It was just a request, an entertainer never turned down a request.

"You know that I adore you.  
Though I couldn't give enough." The Toussaintois bard sounded fine, but this wasn't a fine song it was Jaskier's ballad.  
"Hope you'll be safe in the arms of another.  
Cause I can't take the weight of your love." His voice broke slightly.

Geralt went as long as he could without having it happen. It hadn't been a calculated risk, it had been something unexpected. "What?" He hadn't seen him in two years yet that was the only greeting Geralt could muster.  
"Turn the fuck around so I can punch you in your God damn face." There was no hesitation, Geralt did turn around and without any flicker of contemplation Lambert popped him right in the jaw. Of course the fastest wolf would be the first one to pin him down in the time since Anima had been taken from him. Tunnel minded, fast footed, Lambert was a right terror when transfixed.  
"That all?" Geralt ran a tongue over his busted lip. "I'm busy."  
"No shit. Too fucking busy to even let us know you were alive. Let alone grace us with your God damn presence. Busy." Lambert looked ready to hit him again, paced as such, rolled his wrist with malice but instead he continued speaking and that was somehow worse. "Doing fucking what?" That was an excellent question. What was he doing? What had he been doing? South, he'd just been going south but he hadn't thought on why in quite some time. Did it matter why? "Cyclopses feuding over territory? Alone? You gotta death wish?"

-Densale-  
"Lately I'm getting lost on you.  
I tore your world apart like it was nothing new.  
Never bled so much when I didn't have to.  
I'm given up on a life lived after." Jaskier wasn't even entertaining any more, he was spectating, an alternate. That wasn't his voice singing, he had no voice. Those were his words though, his ballad, his emotions. They were being cawed directly at his face by his one time rival Valdo Marx. To have a rival you have to be in the game, he hadn't been in years, he'd been hiding.  
_'What would Geralt think? What would Anima say?'_ The wouldn't sit and nod as they listened to a cat be strangled. _'Geralt would probably sneak them out a window. They'd probably make their own music, go fuck in the stables . . . Or in the countess' bed if they were feeling bold.'_  
"You know that I adore you.  
Though I couldn't give enough." Valdo didn't even have an excuse for why that line came out so lifeless, so banal. Jaskier felt something, an impulse, not one becoming of such a dignified event. He knew what Geralt would do if someone tried to steal his blades. Jaskier stood, bowed and smiled as he made the length of the hall, just cause he was taking a page out if the witcher's book didn't mean he had to throw his manners out the window. "Hope you'll be safe in the arms of another." Valdo was smirking at him. "Cause I can't take the weight of your love." He was smirking far less when Jaskier punched him.

He knew what Anima would say if someone tried to muck about with her emotions. "If I hear you play another one of my songs Marx, I’ll have you chop your own dick off." He was running, it felt it good, felt better than hiding, had his blood pumping. Had that line made sense? Did that threat have any base in reality? No. It didn't have to though, Jaskier was an entertainer and sometimes you have to improvise.

"No." Geralt wasn't _trying_ to die, wasn't avoiding the path, he was making calculated choices. "That why you came? Vesemir ask you to knock some sense in me?" Sense was all Geralt had left. He'd been taking these contracts that seemed like death kneels not to die, simply because they paid better, if he had more coin he could purchase better tools, get council with more powerful individuals, spend more time plotting a plan that would actually work, he could get the results he was after.  
"Not that you care but no." Lambert wasn't wrong, Geralt didn't care, he was so consumed with completing his task he had little time to care for anything else. "I came here to beat the shit out of you because you let Anima die." That sentence hurt worse than the punch and Lambert's knuckles had not grown softer in years. "She fucking . . . She trusted you. You should have fucking protected her. You should've called us. I would've . . . " Lambert kept pacing, his fists kept clenching, he scowled into the sky for a moment.  
"Hmm." Geralt cared for a moment, he saw the pain in Lambert's face. That was his doing.  
"Can't even fucking . . . Supposed to visit graves you know?" Next to him no wolf cared about Anima the way Lambert did. Honestly Lambert cared for Anima in a way completely unique from Geralt, close in a different way, the loss likely hurt in a different way.  
"Lambert I'm trying-"  
"Yeah we all fucking heard what you're trying Geralt! She ain't a real fucking kitten. Don't got nine lives." Lambert burried the pain, went back to anger. "You should be fucking trying to kill the bitch wearing her skin! Let us fucking . . . Burry her . . . Or give her a send off. I didn't think you'd be the selfish one. Making her suffer! Fucking linger! You know what it's like Geralt, spoke to enough wraiths! It's hell, you're making her wait in hell for you!"  
"It's . . . I can fix it." At that Lambert did punch him again.  
"You have fucking lost it!" Lambert panted steam out his nose for a few minutes. "Should have known, thought you'd see right through it. Cyclopses . . . Here? You've gone delusional. You didn't see anything fishy about that contract Geralt?"  
"When did you grow a brain cell?" It had been a trap, Lambert of all people had outsmarted him.  
"Some of us have been fucking productive Geralt." Both witchers eyes shot to the dense trees of the deceivingly lush forest. Lambert was fast enough to dodge the hailstorm of arrows. No one was as fast as Lambert.  
"Geralt!"

-Densale-  
"I had a hold on your soul." His lungs ached from the sprinting, he could hear the guards chasing after him. "But I lost my grip, let you go." He couldn't stop though, it'd be wise to stop singing, conserve breath but Jaskier wasn't wise he was wistful and honestly a bit wasteful. "I should've carried us both." He was leaving Densale and his countess behind him. "Everyday I'm a slave to the heartache.  
And you're wasting away every night." He was still heartbroken, that he couldn't outrun. "Don't wanna leave you lonely.  
But I've run out of love this time." He couldn't hide either, he was too passionate for his own good. It hadn't worked as a teenager and it didn't work now. "You know that I adore you.  
Though I couldn't give enough." What _did_ work? What was something that worked even when it shouldn't? "Hope you'll be safe in the arms of another." Their impossible friendship, the one he had fought for, he needed to fight for again. "Cause I can't take the weight of your love." Geralt might not want to hear him but Jaskier was loud and persistent and had not let Geralt's tone deaf under appreciation curtail him before, he wouldn't let it now.

"I didn't mean to." Geralt groaned, it didn't hurt as much as the previous times and he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.  
"I know. You've been fighting it with all you're worth Geralt." Anima didn't sound angry, she wasn't crying or sad so that was good, she sounded almost like he remembered. Though there was a smell hitting his nose that alarmed him. Cracking tea leaves, long dried fruit and something else, something that didn't make sense. "Glass." That was a hard scent to pin down. "Blood." That was far more distinct. "You're hurt." Lambert had been smart enough to trap the white wolf, though his location choice had been a bit too dramatic. Was it possible he was right about this? Was Anima waiting wounded for him and he'd been too dense to realize it?  
"I am hurting Geralt but-" Worse than the punch, worse than Lambert's rant.  
"I'm sorry Anima." Geralt was at a cross roads, he had to make a decision, normally he was an excellent decision maker. "I promised . . ." He'd promised so much. Not to hurt her, promised to keep her safe, that she didn't have to be alone, that she never had to be somewhere she didn't wish to be. "Do you hate it here?"  
"Well I don't love it. Not much to see here, an interior decorator could really do wonders-" Coy and aloof, even now, how could she stay so balanced? Why was he so uneven?  
"As I lay dying Anima?" Geralt snorted in genuine amusement. "You can find a way to joke even now?"  
"Geralt . . . you're not dying." Anima chuckled again but Geralt sat up, he must've missed something.  
"What?" She looked like her, not a green etheric outline, not a nightmare, she looked just like his skugga.  
"Has it been that long? Since you really slept? That you feel like you're dying? So when you go into deep sleep your body-"  
"I'm asleep?"  
"Dreaming." Anima nodded.  
"Then how are you here? It's . . . You are here?"  
"Maybe . . . Dreams . . . Where your head goes . . . Is closer?" Anima had been painstakingly trying to branch her memories out from Oxenfurt, it was slow going, there were more gaps than fills when it came to her mind, she was still more than half empty.  
_'Dreams are where the planes are at their most loose, that's a fact.'_ He had heard her explain that more than once. "So I don't have to be dying to see you just-"  
"You are always _dying_ to see me Geralt." There was a pause. "Come on that was clever and you . . . Ha!" She clapped victorious. She had done it, gotten her witcher to smile, not a smirk, not a snarl baring teeth, a smile.  
"Then why have I only seen you when-"  
"Jaskier has said . . . You're a bit of a glutton for misery. You told me that once. . . Right?" Anima's smile staid but concern dulled it round the edges. "You haven't been resting Geralt, to dream you need to rest."  
"Jaskier." Where was the bard? His bard? His best friend? It had been two years Geralt hadn't been able to shake Jaskier for two uniterupted years when he was actively trying to ditch the man. "I need to find him." The bard wasn't dead, he'd be tailed by the sonnets of a spectre Geralt had no doubt, death wouldn't mute the poet.  
"I . . . He's not with you?"  
"I . . . No one is with me. Safer that way. I . . . Haven't exactly been mindful."  
"So you're alone." She sounded sad.  
"Lambert was punching me in the face, might've knocked me out." He tried to get her smile back to that coy confident level it had been at, she did chuckle but the smile diminished further.  
"Lambert." Some memories came back, she remembered Lambert, an alchemy table, a training yard, a dungeon, a bedroom. She was trying to remember where those places sat but her mind hit a wall as she thought harder, every door seem locked. _'Time. It'll come in time.'_ Her time with Geralt was fleeting he'd wake eventually. "He's not taking it well is he?" Geralt could hear her get sadder still.  
"It's Lambert. He takes nothing well." Geralt reached out, it was a dream, he wasn't really touching her yet in his dream her cheek felt just as he remembered. "He . . . Thinks I should kill Nehalenia-"  
"Of course he does. What can't a little murder fix?"  
"Could fix how you're hurting."  
"You think so?" Anima was leery, pain wasn't good but it was something, she'd rather feel something than nothing. "I trust you Geralt." Her witcher seemed leery too, perhaps pain relief wasn't all it was cracked up to be.  
"Trusting me got you here." Geralt bowed his forehead into hers.  
"This isn't your fault Geralt."  
"You are here _for_ me." She wouldn't be so far if she hadn't gone looking for his child of surprise.  
"And you're _here_ for me." She spun words wonderfuly, just in the best way possible yet her lips had a skill they knew even better, she kissed him and any ache in his bones seemed banished at the contact. He wanted this, wanted her.  
"Miss you." His kiss likely wasn't as comforting, it was hungry and rushed, he was starving for her. "Love you." Had this love turned him selfish? Was it worth the pain? He was a glutton for misery but not hers.  
"I love you too Geralt." She did, she always would, she said his name and he believed it. That didn't mean it was right, healthy, fair.  
"I asked you once . . ." A lump formed in his throat. "If I was tasked to make a choice on your behalf . . . When you didn't have the faculties to make them yourself. To let me defer to Thill. She knows you best."  
"Thill." Another name, more memories. "How is she?"  
"I don't know. I . . . Couldn't face them. Jaskier told them of what happened."  
"You think." Anima bit somewhat sharply.  
"Huh?"  
"You haven't seen Jaskier nor Thill . . . It's possible they don't know Geralt. It's possible they think I forgot them. I did forget them Geralt but not on purpose! I wish I could see them, see you. This is-"  
"Shhh." He gave a softer kiss this time round, a promising one. "I will go there. They will not likely be happy to see me but . . . Anima I can't make this choice." He ran his nose up her neck, trying to lock in her scent.  
"Geralt you can do anything." She dropped her face to his chest. "Can't hear it."  
"Not here. Not really."  
"You can do anything Geralt." Disappointed at not hearing the sound she craved she leaned up to kiss him again. "Yet maybe be less a glutton for misery? Don't go it alone. If it makes the choice easier, if it makes it hurt less, you have worse people to consort with than Thill."  
"Hmm." Geralt just let his lips rest on hers, he could feel it, sleep leaving him. "I just want to be . . . I promised to be good to you."  
"You always have been Geralt, always will be."  
"If I . . . Just need to sleep? To get here?"  
"Say it like it's easy Geralt. Your head rarely finds the clouds."  
"Will try."  
"Try for me Geralt. That's all I ask. Dream every now and again." She was running her fingers cross his face, mapping it, memorizing it. "I've finally found a way to stop going in circles. I'll find you sooner or later. I aim to keep you."  
"Ani-" He was hit with a burning pain that turned into a full body ache.

"Fuck!" He coughed but the air had already been knocked out of his lungs. "What-"  
"You kept making those weird fucking duck faces, had to stop it, givin me the creeps." Lambert shrugged from his spot by the fire.  
"So you hit me in the dick?" Geralt adjusted himself as the pain slowly dispersed. Well that specific pain, his arm pinched. _'Shot in . . . Brokilon forest?'_ He hadn't even noticed when he took the contract where he was. Lambert was right, he'd lost his sense of context, cyclopse he could best, he'd been in Brokilon before . . . But if he had read the contract, thought about it like a witcher, it was an impossibility and a deadly one at that.  
"Woke up didn't you?"  
"Arrows were poisioned?" He didn't know exactly what happened.  
"Nah, just arrows." Lambert had dipped one of the bolts down the back of his collar to scratch his back.  
"Then how-"  
"Crashed. The adrenalin from taking six arrows flooded you to get you moving. You fucking moved, then you fucking fell. Druid's aim must be going."  
"Warning shots." Geralt groaned as he stood.  
"Aim must be shit." Lambert reiterated his eyes trailing over Geralt's bandages. "Where are you going? I still-"  
"Lyria."  
"What for? Need to dip yourself in calfling blood and dance with the bruxa?"  
"Wish it was that easy."  
"Not another resurrection idea Geralt. Give it a rest. You can't keep holding onto the dead. Can't let them run your fucking life."  
"You let the sacking of Kaer Morhen . . . Change you Lambert."  
"Do you want to be me Geralt?! My fucking rosey life? With all my friends fame and fortune? Geralt I've been through this! Trust me it ain't doing you any favors. She didn't die so you could go around-" Lambert wasn't doing this for his fellow witcher, his brother, he cared for Geralt but a witcher out of training had all the resources needed to make their own decisions, it was not a brother's place to question. Lambert was trying to influence Geralt because Anima would want him to. Lambert was trying to use his emotions to guide Geralt's choices in honor of a woman he had viewed as a sister.  
"I am going to Lyria to speak with Thill . . . I can't . . . Do what your suggesting without her blessing."  
"Geralt if I thought she was still alive-"  
"Witchers aren't dreamers I know Lambert." Geralt started walking. "Stay safe."

"Ran dry again." Anima took that broken piece of glass, slid it up her palm again, bled again. She had found the end of the void, the wall, she hadn't left it, she dragged her skin across it leaving a crimson streak against the white. She still didn't know if she was going in the right direction but as she looked behind her seeing a dried line she atleast knew she was moving forward. "Don't go back, forward, gotta keep going forward." She didn't know what she was looking for, what could get her home but she knew it didn't lay behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know I said I would post once or twice a month and that is still the plan but I decided I want to post a valentine's day chapter (which I promise won't be so melancholy) and would need this one for context so my self restraint was easily convinced to cave.


	3. Remember to try

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will be editing this chapter throughout the day to have it cleaner, I worked on this in parts and it's still a bit muddy. just did want to make sure I posted it as promised.

"Anima?" He sat up, his head whipped around, he'd done it right? Slept? Dreamed? This was where she was trapped wasn't it? "Anima are you-" There were hands over his eyes and he felt the weight of weeks leave him. He tilted his neck back, smiling as he felt the back of his head hit her chest. "Please." He couldn't be listening any harder for it.  
"I've missed you Geralt." His name sounded wonderful, her soft lips at the crown of his head had him feeling mended.  
"Are you . . . I've missed you too." Sometimes it was cruely brief, he was not an easy sleeper, some sound in the physical word could stir him awake and he could be pulled from her without getting the chance to say it. "How are you?" He turned around, looked at her, though he wanted contact, he had his hand in her hair pulling her face towards his, letting her scent wash over him, he kissed her and it was hungry and desperate and- "Cold."  
"Nothing's changed." She said it with a smile but this was a false, forced smile. "Nothing ever fucking changes here Geralt." He didn't like that she was frustrated but he did chuckle, she was still feeling, which made _him_ feel a bit better still, emotions were her world, she had those if nothing else.  
"I'm here Anima." He kissed her again, trying to be better for her in their brief moment. "I'm here Anima, That changes." He knew the loneliness she was feeling was likely making her lose her grip on sanity, he wanted to mend her back.

  
"Geralt?" She sounded, vulnerable, sad, it caused his face to pull back for him to study her features.  
"Yes Anima?" He knew her name didn't give her that same loved feeling but he also knew she was alone here, for weeks at a time, no one was calling out to her, no one said her name, he didn't want her to forget it.  
"Were you out on a long hunt?"  
"Huh?" Did she want a story of the goings on of the world? He was shit at stories, he wished the bard could find her, could speak a mile a minute, paint a portrait for her with tales, maybe it would offset all the white. "Took a job." He nodded, trying to form decent words in his head for her.  
"You're not . . ." She bit her lip, her eyes looked scared of what she was going to say.  
"I'm not dying Anima." He had done it the right way, a way that wouldn't leave her mad with him, with wounds to patch up when she left.  
"I know." She smiled, that was good news but clearly not the question she was going to ask.  
"I'm not what?" He tugged on her hair with a chuckle. "Don't dance Anima. We don't have the time for it."  
"You're not . . . forgetting about me?" She didn't cry but her voice cracked as if it was a dam under pressure.  
"No." He growled out the word, it was pure instinct and with all the tact that would imply, he tackled her, till he had the high ground, was looming over her, casting a shadow round her. "I wouldn't." He let his fingers dig into her shoulders a bit. "Don't doubt that." He let out a breath trying to calm the plume of rage that question had caused. "Please."  
"I-"  
"I have not forgotten about you Anima. I won't. I just . . . I don't know how to . . .bring you back."  
"Geralt, leave that part to me, stop trying to-"  
"Don't say that!" His head shook violently. "Don't ever say that again." He let his brow clunk into hers. "Please don't take _that_ away from me."  
"What . . .Oh." She placed a tender hand at his cheek, rolled a thumb along his ear. "Trying."  
"For you." It was still a growl but softer. "I know it's hard Anima." He kissed her neck more because he was slow to form words and he didn't want to waste one minute with her. "Please . . . Don't let it . . .twist you. Hold on for me. I won't forget about you. I will find you." This place, this nothingness had her believing that she was as nonexistant, that she would fade from his memory.  
"I'm sorry Geralt. I didn't mean to rile you I just . . .it has been a while . . . .I think." Time wasn't so easily gauged in the void, minutes could seem like hours, days like seconds.  
"A month." He'd for a good stretch since figuring out how to get to her been able once, if he worked himself hard enough twice a week, to find her, to dream but he was getting closer to Lyria, his thoughts were becoming conflicted, sleep wasn't coming as effortlessly, dreaming hadn't come at all. "It's not . . .that I don't want to . . .this is not wyren and werewolves, not my wheelhouse."  
"Fair." Thi smile was genuine, forgiving, mending. She smiled wider when she saw it Geralt was forming a plan, his face settling in deep thought, in facts, it was one of her favorite faces.

  
"I . . . you can bleed here can't you?" Which was not where she was expecting this conversation to go but she trusted his thought process.  
"If I'm cut I bleed." She pointed to the wall of the void, Geralt had never once taken his eyes off of her in the many times he visited.  
"So you don't get lost." He figured out it's purpose but he still sneered, it was a testimonial ribbon of how long he'd let her down. "I will make it up to you Anima. I swear." He couldn't catch her eyes right away, concerned she would have a look of doubt, so instead he took in the remainder of the space, mostly white, mostly nothing but there was . . . furniture. "Bed from Oxenfurt."  
"Don't let her steal you away from me Geralt." She chuckled.  
"Lambert's alchemy table."  
"I wish I had something to work on I'm terribly bored."  
"That's what we'll do the first year you come back. Work on a list for me Anima." He finally turned back to her, a promising look in his eyes.  
"First . . .year?"  
"Hmm. So it's got to be a long list. Any ingredient you want, doesn't matter how rare. I'm going to find it for you and . . .Doesn't even matter the odor, I'll sit with you and watch you make all the dreadful concoctions you want." He needed plenty more ways to make up for this hell she was in but it was a start. "So I'd start on that list now Anima."  
"Well first . . .I wold need horse lime Geralt. That would be tricky for you to find." He knew this ingredient yet she was telling him as if it was new information.  
"I have to kill a horse?" He scrunched his brow but then it smoothed out something determined, it was an ommison but he didn't want her to know how much it hurt she didn't remember, he never understood the phrasing of a broken heart but he did feel an ache, a tugging pain in his chest.

"Leave Roach's lover out of this . . .no horse needed."  
"Then . . ." He laid down, pulling Anima over his chest. "Tell me how it would be tricky? I don't mind a challenge." They both melted into the spot, finally relaxing for the first time in a month, he'd hear the explanation again, he'd hear anything, he missed her voice terribly.  
"It's odorless . . .truly odorless. Even for you." She bopped a finger into his nose.  
"Hmm." He ran fingers through her hair kissing the top of her head gingerly, there was no more soft for him in the real world, this was the only place he could allow himself to be this way. "Where would I look then?"  
"Come now. Put that mind to work for me love-" She smiled at the grunt of taking that word. "You know all manner of beasts. Tell me what you've been hunting lately, I'll tell you if you're warm or cold."  
"Hmm." There was nearly nothing here but she made it feel like home, got him speaking, not fantastic portait levels stories but he spoke of what he knew and while the topic didn't thrill, she remained that weight at his chest, familiar, comforting, home.

"Geralt?" She didn't let the air grow stale when he ran out of stories, she trailed back to a question that confused.  
"Here." He was rolling shaped and patterns a bit lazily long her back with his knuckles, it was the one small upside to the void, to his dreams, time didn't matter he could be slow.  
"Why did you ask if I could bleed here?" It had been an odd curiousity and Geralt rarely asked without purpose.  
"If you bleed, means you bruise."  
"I can also sneeze if I so desire what's your point?"  
"Hmm." He turned them over, taking the high ground again. "Means I can leave you with something." Those were poor words, dark, threatening words, she didn't look scared though, even if she had a physical body to injure she had all the faith in him he'd never.  
"Care to elaborate Geralt?"  
"Rather show you." She felt his teeth at her neck, holding the flesh in place, felt his tounge lapping with a heavy pressure.  
"Geralt!" She laughed, it tickled, or maybe she just remembered it used to either way she laughed. "Gods Geralt! Think nothing can't be solved with a good lovebite."  
"Hmm." He finally broke the contact, kissing at something that would bruise deep, linger long. "Sorry." He had over done it, had gone past any mark he'd left into her skin, he just didn't want her to doubt him, think his absence meant he had given up.  
"When I come back Geralt . . . nothing so . . .this is _not_ subtle." Thy didn't make collars high enough to cover this.  
"I won't have to." He leaned in to kiss her. "I'll have you. Won't have to remind you."  
"I'll still want reminders now and again." She let her fingers card through his hair.  
"Then you can have them. You can have anything Anima. I'll make it up to you I promise." He would spend any and every free moment once he got her back, how much he missed her. "Love you."  
"Well that's all well and grand _then_. How about now?" Her hands left his hair and found the hem to his tunic nudging it upwards.  
"Huh?"  
"What if I want you to prove you love me now?" She kissed a line from one broad shoulder, cross his chest to the other.  
"Anima." This was a dangerous game, it would cause his body to start pumping blood faster, would rouse him, would raise him, he would wake, would leave. "Want to stay."  
"Then stay for me, try. That was an awfully strong love bite Geralt. What if I wanted you to be soft to me, remind me of that?" She grinned wide at his blown out eyes, and that near purr he gave her.  
"Hmm." He wanted better words, he wanted any words, all the words, she hadn't lost it to the void, seer of all wants and needs, it was the best mixed bag request she had ever given him. A challenge of soft, of staying, of pleasing her, it made all his pent up hunger surge. "When I get you back-" He had to swallow, get some moisture to a dry ty throat.  
"You'll make me wait till-"  
"No." He lifted her up, taking her over to that Oxenfurt bed. "Now is . . .I want . . ." His thoughts weren't pressing out right, lust was fogging his forethought as he undressed her.  
"Well, if you leave an impression now-" She always was there swept in when he stumbled. "I don't see any reason that wouldn't be the way I ask you to have me when I get back." Always had just the best words. "Does that seem fair?"  
"More than fair." He thought for a moment, another dangerous proposition hit him, one that would hurt more than likely but perhaps it would help mend. "Anima?" He mumbled against her skin.

"Are you . . ." She didn't want to say nervous, the void had scrubbed her of a lot of who she was, most of her memories, a witcher's pride was not something the white could even wash away he brought it with him everywhere he went but Geralt's face while determined as always seemed just a bit frantic.  
"It's . . ." Geralt had something he didn't want to mention either, he knew it would just make her upset, it _had_ made her upset, he didn't want his dream to be her nightmare.  
"Oh your pulse is racing isn't it?" She couldn't hear it, her favorite sound in the whole world, better than crunching snow, Geralt's pleasant anchoring heartbeat, opposite to his pride it never came with him.   
"Anima I'm-" He'd tried, she had asked last time and he'd tried with no results to focus on his pulse hoping it would carry but it never did, he'd failed her yet again. "Maybe . . . You can remember it?"  
"Remembering is not my strong suit right now Geralt." Her smile dipped into a pout just for a second. "It's . . . I'm not all-"  
"Anima. . ." The tugging pulled harder, it made his fists clenched, made him wince.  
"Geralt?" She had been in a good mood all things considered and it wrenched him terribly to break it. Yet they were trying to mend, setting bones took some rebreaking.  
"You've . . . Told me of horse lime before . . . a few years ago."  
"Oh." He had his chin perched at her center, there was no reprive from the break in her smile. " _That_ you remember." It was a dry hurt little chuckled.  
"I remember because . . . It was . . .an important day . . . sort of."  
"Sort of?"  
"I'd like . . .to remind you if that's all right." He was still on her, over her, a shaddow where there wasn't a place for it, still touching her, providing actions in the stagnant space but he wanted to give her words as well, memories that might keep her warm.  
"I'd like that Geralt." 

\- Years prior-  
"Geralt?" He'd been shifting from her gaze all day, the better part of yesterday as well.  
"Hmm?" He slowed his trot a bit, he wasn't running from her, afraid of her, just, he had a lot on his mind, things he didn't want her poking and prodding at just yet.   
"You're not fitting to leave are you?" She asked it so haphazardly, she laughed outright when both Geralt and Jaskier replied in tandem.  
"What?!" Roach even brayed a bit surprised as she was pulled to a stop.  
"Leave? Like . . . Go to some Loc somewhere, or up some ungodly rock face we can't scale. Leave us so you can do your job . . . Better?" It wasn't a self conscious concern it was one of pragmatism, the witcher did, usually bi yearly, take some well paying job that his companions would slow him down immeasurably if they followed, he'd leave them to their own devices for a month or so.   
"No." Roach was moving again, he needed more distance, Anima's eye for temperament change was quite literally other worldly he needed out of her gaze.   
"Ease off him today will you Anima? He's trying." Jaskier was being a team player, moving with far more purpose than his penchant for sight seeing normally catered to.  
"Today? What's so special about today? He always tries." The offense she took on his behalf got the edges of Geralt's ears to burn a bit red. "I'm sure I woke up on the right side of the bedroll. Geralt gave me his extra oats, it's a good day!" Geralt could hear how sarcastically dim she was being, was she teasing him because he had forgotten the year prior? It wasn't cruel, there had been praise in there, she had noticed the small geasutre he could muster in the middle of nowhere, so not cruel just confusing.  
"You know damn well . . . Wait." The bard had stopped, Geralt looked over his shoulder, this dust up would not help them get to town any faster. "Nope! This is a trap!"  
"Wh-"  
"Trap I say! You want me to mess this up like I-" Jaskier clamped his mouth shut and scowled at Anima.   
"Like what?" Anima was blinked sure and stupid.   
"Geralt! Turn her off!" Jaskier was leery not of Anima's eyes but her ears, worried he would spill something.   
"If I haven't been able to turn you off Jaskier what luck do you think I'd have with her. Both on from sun up to sun down." He didn't want to turn either of the off but if Jaskier could stop shouting and Anima could stop snooping it would allow Geralt to go over his plan in his head again, it wasn't a complicated one, just one he wasn't the most confident in. "Don't make this Gullet again, walk."  
"Gullet? So you are leaving?!" Anima almost looked genuinely confused but neither man was falling for it.   
"Can we go, we're wasting the day." Geralt turned back to the road, hearing the bard's feet pickup.  
"Did I do something . . Maybe we've been in the woods too long, nagging on nerves." Anima's pace wasn't rushed, if anything it slowed, they asked she answered she gave them space.  
"Hmm." Were his ears good enough to hear arms fold huffed over one's chest? This was not promising. 

"Don't . . . Head straight for the bar Anima alright? I'm going to order a bath if-" Geralt laid his pack down against the wall.  
"Oh are we done playing the quiet game?" She sounded . . . Annoyed.  
 _'We did just ignore her for four straight hours.'_ Geralt didn't enjoy long silences so much as he didn't recognize them as such, he was always listening, always hearing. He finally dared looking at her, she _looked_ annoyed _. 'Shit.'_ He didn't want her mad with him, not today, it was supposed to be an important day, a good day. "I . . .uh-" He scratched the back of his head. "I just didn't want Jaskier or I to ruin it."   
"Ruin _what_ Geralt?" He could hear a bothered exhale, a sweeping calm inhale.   
"That I remembered this time."   
"You . . . Remembered . . ." She looked like she might give those sarcastic blinks again but then had pity on the witcher and gave up on teasing. "You didn't forget?" Her frown upturned, it was a smile but Anima could smile despite everything and anything, Geralt had to know she wasn't just burying the annoyance, this time would be better, well anything was better than forgetting, he wanted it to be best.   
"I didn't." He sat next to her on the bed, trying to smile to offset, was he nervous? No there was nothing to be nervous about, and even if there was, nerves had been bleached out of him years ago. He was anxious, overly eager to try and succeed, he needed to simmer slightly, attempts at new came few and far between for the witcher, he'd worked himself up. He rested his head on her shoulder, burried his face into her hair. "Would you want to share a bath?" It would either relax him or expedite the night, he could work with either.   
"Well I was going to stop at the blacks-"  
"No." He pulled back, it hadn't been bad, what they had done last year, it had been cheeky wonderful fun but it had been mostly for him, they'd ducked into the smith's workspace and fucked on the bench, that was not romantic, or so the bard had told them about half a dozen times since it came to light that had been Anima's gift to him. _'I liked it.'_ Blood surged at the memory. Though in reflection it _was_ selfish, he wanted to give to her this time.  
"No? Do you have bad blood with this smith?"  
"Huh?" He'd been ignoring her again, getting lost in the memory. "Fuck." He kissed her temple, before locking eyes. "No I mean . . . If you want to we can . . . Only if that's what you want." It wasn't what she wanted, he was nearly sure of it.   
"How about. . ." She took his face into her hands, gave him a soft kiss, a slow kiss, it stilled him and he let out an appreciative groan against her lips. "You have a plan and I'm cramping it aren't I?"  
"Hmm." He had a plan he thought was both right and stupid, it was quite the dichotomy. "I can be flexible." If she had better ideas for the day, something she wanted he'd gladly obliged.   
"So can I." She kissed him a bit hungrier, let her fingers start to do work of his armor.

  
"You've gotten quite good at that." It was beautifuly fluid, she knew each buckle and snap as well as he did and that was a warm feeling, a close feeling. He'd never had a woman disarm him so efficiently, with so much care, she didn't drag and wrench at the pieces, she knew they were important, thought him important, treated him as such.  
"If I want to learn something nothing can deter me and I've had years of practice." She had learned every inch of him, loved every bit, the worst and the best of him.  
"Don't want to deter you." He fought not at all as she pushed him into the bed.  
"So-"  
"Normally your sos come after Anima."   
"Just wanted to know if this was part of your plan." Yet she wasn't stopping, wasn't pausing, slinking out of clothing that he he nudged at, it was kind, there wasn't any stutter, any doubt she trusted him even if things weren't going to plan.   
"Plan was for after." He turned them, maybe not according to plan but best was still the goal. "Can be before as well."  
"Care to tell me of this plan darling?" So she _had_ stopped playing dumb entirely, she was admitting this was a special day, she saved that word for special days, too soft, too much for the average and ordinary. He grumbled over the question as her hand carded through his hair while his trailed kisses down her stomach, leaving a nip once he reached a hip. "Nothing . . . Fancy."  
"Shutter the thought." He glanced up from her thigh leaving another bite.   
"Did you want-"  
"We are not fancy love." She had just the fondest smile for him, all his grit all his literal grime, the path was not fancy, it was dirty and draining.   
"A bath." He needed to get his words out now, he had other uses of his mouth, better ones. "Dinner . . . There's a small theater in the center-"  
"A theater? That's why Jaskier was sprinting here?"   
"Jaskier suggested . . .culture." Geralt was more than half convinced the bard was seeking cultured copulation all his own with some of the resident artists yet that was fine, Jaskier was more than welcomed to be selfish and it meant he'd find another bedroom to tumble through, Geralt and Anima didn't have to share. "Back here ideally . . . That was the plan." He ran an uncultured tounge up her other thigh, he really wanted this talking bit to be over.   
"Well if your plan brings us back here-" Her hips rolled into those better uses of Geralt's mouth. "Then I am a huge proponent." It was a wonderful sigh but that was a long word, he wanted her shorter better words.

"Geralt this pace of yours is maddening." It wasn't blistering fast or heavy, the opposite, it was soft and slow and if Geralt was feeling as well on himself as he was in the moment he'd say it was close to tender, he was trying. He tried to keep his eyes on her, she took the build far better than he did, just writhing and reddening it was nearly everything he wanted. "Geralt." That was better than any long winding word, his name was better but she hadn't said it best yet. He let his palms engulf her hips, press down, hold her. "I've got you Anima." He broke away with deep heady breaths.  
"I know . . . Know you do . . . Please Geralt." He could have just staid there, just teasing just enjoying letting himself rest his senses in such a warm inviting space but today wasn't about teasing, it was special, important it was supposed to be a showing of best.   
"Anything Anima, I'm here. I've got you."   
"Geralt." It was rare that she whimpered, he wasn't sure how he felt about it, normally he wanted his name shouted, loud as she felt comfortable, this was different, it was still nice but something was different. "Anima?" He rested his face against her thigh nuzzling some still pent energy into her skin. "Again?" Perhaps it had been underwhelming.  
"No." And that struck, felt like led in his stomach. "That was quite enough." He didn't mean to frown and was quick to get his face back to neutral but she caught it, her eyes missed not one emotion, even in her pleased haze.   
"It . . ." He rolled over onto the side of the bed a bit at a loss.   
"You shouldn't be pouting you know?" She followed him, let her face rest against his heart for a moment or two.  
"I'm not pouting." At this point he was just grumbling, entirely different.  
"You're restless." She could hear it, his pulse was still eager still wanting.   
"It's fine." When she kissed him, it took him a bit by surprise, she wasn't done with him.  
"I simply mean to return the favor Geralt, you vacuum of worry! Then we can get back to your plan." Her kisses went down his neck.  
"Did . . .hmm." they trailed down further. "I didn't mean to rush you." That's why it was easier when she led, she had a mind for pacing in throws, it was never too fast, too slow, just right.   
"You were near by definition _not_ rushing . . . Though I'd _like_ you to." That statement just confused him further.   
"Huh?"   
"Restless remember?" Kissing devolved wonderfuly into licking. "But you don't rest, at best you tire yourself out and some times you don't even heed that."  
"Anima." Her tongue was warm and firm and purposefull but he wanted more. It was a want and Anima saw it, found it as soon as it popped into his head, her hand pulled his from the sheets and folded it into her hair. She looked up at him a bit expectantly as her mouth slid over him. She was moving slow, soft like him but it was different, her eyes were asking of him, wanting something.   
_'That's not . . .'_ His fist tightened in her hair, he knew what she was asking, was allowing but that just seemed . . . Not right. _'Selfish.'_ She wanted him to set the pace, to rut into her at whatever speed took him into release, to pull her into it, he thought about it and groaned accordingly yet he didn't he remained still. "That's not what . . . Hmm . . ." It _was_ what he wanted, he wanted it terribly, every single blood vessle that he was woefully aware of wanted exactly that, but it was a day to be kind and loving and soft so he didn't. She let out a sigh and Geralt was not an empath so he had not a clue what it meant, acceptance, disappointment, making room for more air because her throat was clogged? "If you want-" He sucked in a breath as she pulled off for a moment.  
"Want you anyway you'll have me love. You rarely like to lay as a log so I'll enjoy it while it lasts."  
"I-"  
"You're enough _always_ Geralt, any which way, though I like when you give in to what you want better than when you fight it." She was gone again, back at it, this time faster, she wasn't waiting for him to guide her, the moment had passed.   
"Fuck." He could have let more guilt or concern chew him from the inside but that would take cognitive thought and he had not the blood for that, if she was disappointed or annoyed her efforts showed none of that. "Anima I . . ." He did crack, did cave, he did let his fist bunch up slightly, hold her in place for the last reaming thrusts as release took him. 

"Geralt?" Normally it was a so that came after, this day was so odd, so annomolious, he didn't have his normal patterns and tells to advise him how things were fairing.  
"Hmm?" She did find her resting spot at his chest, that was a kind enough gift, normal enough, he held her a bit tighter, wanting not to lose it.   
"What is . . . Do you think I'm upset with you? Because I don't know how _past_ partners showed how they were upset with you but I assure you-" Her smile was genuine and warming and had him feeling slightly better.  
"No." He wasn't an empath but he knew she wasn't angry with him, he just felt she wasn't as happy as she could've been. "Just . . ." It wasn't his strength, strength was his . . . Strength, soft was hard, he was trying but she seemed almost compliant in his failure, he didn't want her to make it easy for him but in past times she had, perhaps she was tired of holding his hand through it.   
"Still restless." She casually broke the building silence.   
"Bath will help." She was right, he had too much energy, he just needed to wind down and then he could be soft and attentive and prove, he would try just as hard, harder than those who could offer more.   
"You believe baths could solve the world Geralt." She finally did remove herself, went in search of clothes strewn about the room. "Which reminds me!"  
"Hmm?" Geralt was already dressed, waiting by the door chuckling as she got bested by her own trousers.  
"I have a present for you!" She gave him a shooing motion.   
"Oh." _This_ he was prepared for. "Did you want yours now?" He went over to his satchel.  
"You got me a bath gift?"  
"Er . . . A . . . Not for baths." He let out a frustrated sigh. "I'll give it to you after." He stepped outside to wait for her.

"So what is it?"  
"Close your eyes!" She sounded nearly giddy and so he didn't think twice, though he'd much rather be in the bath than hovering around it letting the water run cold. He heard something rain into the water he was being kept from.  
"Salts?"   
"What do you smell?" She was even more eager yet the air smelled of . . .nothing, he gave it a second sniff but still it was just air, he could smell the Inn, could smell her, him, what the kitchen was cooking down the hall, he could smell Roach out in the stables to some extent but there wasn't anything coming from the bath.  
"Nothing." He refused to try a third time, his nose worked just fine.   
"Now get in!" She was going to pop she was so excited, it had him a bit concerned if he was being honest.   
"My eyes had to be closed for this because?" He grabbed a bit at air till he finally reached the lip of the basin, slowly with apprehension he sat in. The water was warm, as his shoulders dunked in and resurfaced he realized the heat remained, a pleasant near burn at his muscles, he knew this feeling. "Like the minted salve."  
"Without the smell!" Anima was down right euphoric. "You can open your eyes by the way."  
"How'd you manage that?" He watched as she hopped in the otherside of the cramped basin, he was quick to remedy that situation pulling her into his lap, placing an appreciative kiss on the inside of her throat.  
"Alchemy bunk you're not interested in."  
"Who says I'm not intrested?"   
"Your eyes as they gloss over every time you ask what I'm working on and I foolishly waste breath speaking about it."  
"Not wasted breath." He sunk a bit deeper, letting her gift do it's job. "I may not care very much about the words you're saying but I . . . Like the way you say it." Finally willed to move he tried again, soft, this felt less uneven, he felt her lean back into his touch, as he mapped out her skin, there was very little actual washing happening but neither one of them seemed to mind. _'Baths **do** solve everything.'_  
"How do I say it?"   
"Hmm." He let his eyes close as he thought about her last seminar on some blade oil she was making. "Confident." That wasn't it, she sounded confident nearly always, sometimes beyond what was wise or even tactful. "Right." She did sound smart using all those words, and whatever she presented did it's job though he didn't think that was what he liked about it, he could make potions on his own, buy them, it wasn't the end result he cared about. "Happy?" She sounded pleased, like he did when a hunt went well, just knowing your confidence, your smarts, your ability solved what others couldn't. "Proud, you should feel proud, you do good work." He pulled her chin a bit, kissing her. "Thank you."  
"Well since you asked!" She leaned into him even more, let a hand roll up to his ear, thumbing at it, either asking him to or thanking him for listening. "It's horse lime!"  
"The fuck is horse lime?" He didn't care, he really didn't, yet he didn't hesitate to ask.   
"It's got a neutralizing bonding agent, tastes like dirt but odorless absolutely odorless. . . Even to the likes of you."  
"Hmm." She listened to him blather on about monsters for months straight, he knew the glossy eyed look she was speaking of, she was guilty of it too, yet she listened to him, he'd gladly listen to her speak happily about her mixes. "What's it come from? Horses or citrus?"   
"You can close your eyes again if you want Geralt."   
"I'm still listening."   
"You are never not listening love. I'm going to quiz you on it, relaxed and half listening is fine snoring I will not tolerate."  
"Fair." He allowed himself to relax even further. They sat there till they started to prune, till the water got cold and Geralt's ears had gone good and numb to both the words horse and lime respectively. "I will fall asleep here. Up and out." He let his hips buck up at bit playfuly.  
"Finally!" With a shiver she got out.  
"Finally?" He'd been having a fairly good time, so much so he'd lost track of it. Perhaps she'd lost a thrill for the bath once it had gone into tepid and lounging.  
"You're less restless." She smiled as she dried off.   
"You're soothing when you want to be." He stepped out shaking the water out of his hair, he could have used a towel like a civilized person but she blushed for a dripping witcher and he was quite fond of that shade. "Dinner?" Things were back on track, she had settled him by hook or by crook and he felt a hundred times better for it.

  
"Where are you going?" He watched her take a sharp left, he had to reach out and grab her by the wrist before he lost her to an inn full of stout and jaunty music.  
"To . . . Ask the bar keep what they have for dinner? What did you want to hunt something we just got clean Geralt, it's already dark-"  
"There are other places to eat outside of Inns and campfires."  
"Yeah I . . ." Anima squinted at him for a moment. "Right plan. You have a plan." Her smile wasn't as nice as it was in the bath but it hadn't fallen into a frown. "Wherever you want to go Geralt. Any which way." She even laced her fingers with his, a bold and caring gesture, he slid his thumb cross her wrist, it was something he did generally to sooth her but he did it to remain settled, remain calm, he hated restaurants.

It always went the same, always a corner, which was fine, he didn't mind corners, people would always gawk, wondering what witchers ate, if the had table manners or chewed and grunted like they were born in a barn, which was fine, he was used to being a rarity of a relic, thing of it was if everything was the same, why did he have to pay twice as much for half a serving of food. "Yoo hoo!" She was waving a hand infront of his face.  
"Hmm?" How many times had he been caught ignoring her today? "Sorry." He leaned a bit heavier into his elbows, curled in his shoulders tunneled his vision trying to keep his eyes set on her.   
"I will buy dinner. Will that make you scowl less?"   
"It's not . . ." It was that and solely that, indulgences were impractical and pricy neither sat well with him. "Do you know what you want?"   
"No. I don't know what half of what that man told us was . . . _Was_ it food Geralt? Are you sure?" That got rid of the scowl, he even mustered a chuckle.   
"I'm sure." He thought a bit, Anima had been to restaurants before, he knew that for a fact, she hadn't traveled the continent as long as he had but she hadn't lived locked in a tower, Lyria had restaurants, she'd likely let Thill drag her to each and every one. "You ordered toast and jam even then?" He sighed upon realization.  
"Not always toast and jam . . . Always sweets though . . . And tea. I could get undercooked meat just fine at home."  
"And tea." Geralt rolled his eyes, it didn't matter who was paying for it, upcharged jam and tea was just stupid. "Will you _try_ something . . .different?"  
"I will _try_ anything once and most things twice. Do you have a suggestion?" She could choose just fine, she was giving some control to the off kilter witcher.  
"Hmm." His smile stuck this time, that was worth the price, he liked that she trusted his judgement, he liked showing Anima new things and this new thing didn't even have claws or teeth. "You would probably like Kopytka."  
"Then I will try it."  
"You don't even know what it is." Trust was good, blind trust was unsettling.  
"And if I hate it you'll finish it for me because you won't leave anything on the plate out of principle." She wasn't wrong. "Though I love the way your mind works, why that weird word and not another?"  
"Potatoes dumplings some sort of meat . . . It's served in cream . . . I haven't but people _have_ put sugar on it."  
"I _will_ put sugar on it!"   
"Hmm." They didn't talk much during dinner, any time one of them opened their mouth the other was closing theirs over a spoonful of food or making a face at someone to make them blink and look away. He didn't mind the quiet but he didn't feel as close to her across the table as he would have in some booth back at the inn, it was fine but not better, just different and more expensive. 

"Here." He finally spoke after licking his palm to get the residule taste off sugar and starch out of his mouth. They were walking to the theater Jaskier had been hot heeled to get to. It wasn't for baths, it wasn't for theater either but it wasn't doing him any good fidling around with it as they walked. "Your gift."   
"Thank you." She stopped their walk, to undo the parcel paper.   
"For tea?" It was a kettle, not a dent, not a scratch, this gift had not been plucked from the bottom of an estuary.   
"No . . . I mean you can . . . So long as you clean it properly. I know I get glossy . . . I do listen sometimes . . . It's copper."  
"For distilling!" Her eyes lit up.  
"It'll work . . . Lambert said it should work."   
"You'll notice the difference Geralt I assure you." Kettle in hand she looped her arms around his neck and kissed him. "Your vile potions will never taste of berries and honeysuckle but this will do wonders to-"  
"I didn't . . ." He didn't get it for his benefit he got it because he cared about having the right tools for his trade so should she. "You like it? Could've gotten . . ." He could have gotten her jam or added another dance to his ever growing tab but a practical gift seemed right to him.   
"Love it . . ." She kissed him again. "Love you." And a third time.   
"Hmm." He grinned as his hold at her back got more firm more assured. "Culture?" He glanced over to the small looking theater down the road.  
"Geralt . . . That's . . . A . . . What sort of culture are you . . . Did Jaskier tell you what _sort_ of theater he was taking us to?"  
"There's more than one kind?" Geralt didn't pretend to be a thespian.   
"You'll either love it or hate it. Either way it will be . . . Different . . . That's what you're going for isn't it . . . With today . . . You want us to be different?"  
"Not always." He placed a large palm at the base of her neck. "Don't mind how we are . . . Just . . . Sometimes. We can be . . . More like the way normal pairs are . . . Allowed to be." He'd given her soft moments but there were pairs that lived soft lives, even those of lesser means had soft evenings and she deserved at least that.   
"Any which way Geralt." She unlocked her hands from his neck and started walking, almost skipping.  
 _'She keeps saying that.'_ It was a short punch of words but it didn't hit as well as most others and he wasn't sure why. He followed her right through the door and stood with her wide eyed as they took in the culture.

"That's a whole lot of . . ." Skin a whole bunch of skin, there was singing and maybe there was acting of some variety but mostly skin.  
"Tits . . . Whole lot of tits." Anima nodded thoughtfully. "It's burlesque Geralt."  
"I know what it-" He'd been to his fair share of whore houses under the guise of art, to be fair this place seemed to be giving it a genuine go.  
"Mind closing the door!" Geralt turned to his left and realized if nothing else this place was an equal opportunist employer. It was a lot on every single one of Geralt's senses and he was scrambling to make order of all the information hitting him. "We should go." It wasn't the slight shake in his medallion that was giving him pause but it wasn't helping.  
"Too much culture? Not enough culture? Oh look Jaskier!"  
"Of course Jaskier." Geralt did shut the door leaning heavy against it, glaring at the bard. _'At least he's got his clothes on.'_ Jaskier was quite in his element playing raunchy debauched songs as scantily clad women and men sauntered and slinked around him.  
"Did I not tell you the show would leave nothing to the imagination? You hate imagination Geralt this is-" Jaskier could see his words were not swaying the witcher. "The life of a bachelor is rough Geralt! You two are so stupid in love and I don't have my own date of choice I knew I'd be terribly lonely. It is not half as awful as your glower implies!"  
"Look lonely." Geralt grumbled then as he really took in the space, the tone of the room he turned to Anima, this was not a romantic gesture.   
"Eskel will have you tell this story all winter bard. Don't forget a detail." Anima didn't seem nearly as upset as Geralt thought she would be, she was laughing.   
"Imprinting . . ." Jaskier had to adjust his lute to accommodate a lovely young lady into his lap. "It all to memory. I plan to learn a thing or two."  
"That's not why I brought you here." Geralt wasn't why they still _were_ here, his legs were not moving, his eyes couldn't find a spot to stop moving.   
"I don't learn new tricks Geralt, mine are tried tested and-"  
"Best." He kicked himself out of his position at the door, enough was enough, he'd tried to be soft and the night had been uneven because of it, he would go back to _his_ tried and tested, strength. He grabbed her hips and pulled her into him.   
"There you are I've missed you." She'd had fine smiles all day but this was better, this one was best.  
"I did try." He let her backstep them to a corner. "To be . . ."  
"Someone else."  
"Huh?"  
"You were trying to be someone else . . . Or you if . . . _You_ were someone else. When did you feel best tonight?" The saving grace of all the flesh on display was no one had the time or care to notice two mutants kissing mildly to themselves in the shaddows, this wasn't a restaurant, wasn't an inn, it was more, they were allowed more, were drowned out by actions and sounds that were more jarring than them.   
"Your mouth was-" He felt a slight pinch at his ear, he was taking her question too literally. "The bath?"  
"When you were in your element, not trouncing through crowds sat on display. You spent this whole night trying to be . . . What you _think_ is romantic . . . Think is what _should_ be romantic."  
"Trying to be . . . Soft." Eskel did it fine, Anima and Jaskier were fluent in it, he had tried.   
"You know how to be soft Geralt. You can do it as yourself . . . Doesn't have to be in the way that works for others. If I wanted others I'd have them." That got a hinging on possessive growl from in deep in his throat. "I will love you any which way, you are well within your right to try to do things as others do. If being just like a man from anywhere is something you want a taste of that's fine. Have the fantasy but don't think that's what I'm expecting of you." Anima was staradling his lap, a hair short of lewd, just open enough to be a tease.   
"Don't want to be a man from anywhere. Fantasy-" He glanced from side to side, there was plenty of fantasy to spare. "Does not compare to what I have." He left a nip into her neck. "I have you."   
"You do Geralt." That's why he'd never choose to be someone from somewhere, he'd miss hearing his name just like that. "I aim to-" Her words were cut off and Geralt was immediately right back on edge. Some man had placed a hand on Anima's shoulder.

  
"Stroll on strumpet."   
"Off." Geralt's placed one had at each of Anima's side to keep from grabbing the out of place appendage. He did glare up at the man, the dark lighting made his bared teeth and set and slitted eyes look all the more menacing.   
"I've got work for you witcher."  
"Remove your hand." Geralt spoke as a witcher would, neutral with just a hint of a threat laying underneath, of good of evil, of whatever the moment dictated. The man did let go, hands up to imply no offense but they were beyond that point.   
"Listen to me for a few moments and you can afford the rest of the night with-"  
"Your work . . ." Geralt sneered, he didn't want to entertain a man who was degrading Anima in his presence. "Find another."  
"There's a succubus in the-"  
"I am aware." He had had caught a faint odor upon entering but it had taken such a back seat to everything else. " _She_ is minding her business, unlike you. I don't have want for your work. She's scorned your advances, move on."  
"I-"  
"Move on from our eyeline." Geralt added for clarity. "From our reach." He wasn't sure he could be more clear without punching the man.  
"Too good for coin are you? Some nobel-"  
"Sir." Anima hadn't moved from her place in Geralt's lap, opting just to tilt her head back, Geralt's eyes focused on it's bend, on it's display, just for him, flaunting such vulnerability in front of a threat. It wasn't louder but it was love, it was trust. "I have spent this whole blasted day trying to have my vildkarl less restless, do not undo all my hard work." She was giving the man a moment, she would make him move on before losing Geralt's mood.   
"Hmm." It was a threat but in their dark way it was romantic, she called him her's spoke to how she wanted him, how she aimed to keep him. Geralt couldn't help it, he reached up, let his hand slide up her throat.   
"The fuck is-" The man was clearly going to shout about one pair of eyes or another. Geralt made a bid to stand but Anima spoke first.  
"Go home. Lonely is sometimes what one deserves." It was a blink and you'll miss it moment, she'd given the human a chance but just the one, she had forced some emotion, maybe some sense into the man, he left without another word. The salts were a thoughtful, practical gift but her words were better, some may deserve loneliness but not him not her vildkarl.

"Too much culture." He grumbled as his fingers rolled down her back watched her eyes to make sure nothing lingered poorly in them.  
"Geralt we can stay. That was a hiccup we've-"  
"Can't hear you over . . . The culture." The music was fine, the show was well corigraphed, it was tastefully salacious, it just held none of his attention. Geralt kissed her, he did not want her to dwell on . . . Anything, he wanted her focus back.  
"Well the plan was to get back to that bed Geralt."   
"Shit plan but . . . Ends all that matters." He scooped her up and stood. "Back?"  
"I can walk Geralt. He's not going to jump from the bushes."  
"Sure can but your slower than me." He wanted her to know she had saved his mood, she had solved what was bothering him, he would not pretend to be someone else. "Let him jump from the bushes, he's likely even slower." It was a cocky grin full of a witcher's fixed ego.  
"Back then." She ground into him a grin to match.  
"Jaskier!"  
"For 'tis naught, but bad luck To fuck with a . . . Geralt?" Jaskier was half on stage and a quarter listening to the witcher.   
"Grope for trout in familiar rivers, I don't wish to cut you from some net in the morning."That was warning enough for Geralt's conscience, if he had to pull Jaskier from the den of the succubus come morn, it was a travesty he could endure, being here when they could be back in their bed was no such one.  
"The bloody hell does that mean?"  
"Enjoy yourself don't endanger our lives we'll try our best on our end." Anima smiled as they left. 

  
"It was different from the beginning . . . Why?" He understood why dinner was quiet and distanced, he understood why the theater was anything but, people, neither one of them were ones for crowds. Though they had started off on the wrong foot and he wasn't sure why.   
"I don't turn off." Anima shrugged as she fell into bed with him.  
"Huh?"  
"I noticed that you weren't acting as you wanted, you were acting out of some sort of obligation and it . . . Distracted me a bit, I needed to figure out why."  
"Became a puzzle instead of a pleasure." That was the cause for the whimpers, she had enjoyed herself physically, her mind was elsewhere. It was a gift, a skill, her ability to read emotions but just as he couldn't shut off his senses, neither could Anima, sometimes it could be a hindrance. It hadn't been her fault entirely the night was wonky but her hyper awareness that it was had left Geralt out of sorts.  
"You are so often the best mix of both Geralt it just baffled me."  
"Let me try again?" Again he was over her and this time they didn't even have to bother with his armor. "I want . . ." She knew what he wanted, he needed to trust her judgment and care the same way she did his.   
"You never disappoint me when you try Geralt." It was the same as before, near the exact same motions to the letter but he felt different, he felt more sure. "Geralt." She looked somehow redder than before, looked more at ease more comfortable. It wasn't that he couldn't be soft and tender, romantic even, it was that she only wanted him trying if he wanted it. He wanted it _terribly_ , he did get her to the edge and then stopped, teased, held her there and while there was frustration in some of those moans, they were loud and pleased and proud as well, it could be soft and a little rough around the edges. "Geralt will you please-" Her back arched wonderfly, wanted him, needed him. He grabbed her hips and held her down to the mattress just as before, but it was somehow better. "Geralt we've talked and kissed and . . ." She seemed a bit frantic and it had Geralt all the more eager, he wanted her gone, wanted her lost in it. "Can you give your mouth a rest and just fuck me!" This was better, best.   
"Just a bit louder for me Anima?" Simply because she knew every want didn't mean he couldn't voice them, couldn't grin right into her skin as he met her request. He watched her bite on her lip considering the notion, He was allowed to bask in it as it came, he had tried and earned that sound.  
"Geralt!" His name, same as always, it didn't have to be new or different to be exactly how he wanted it, just his name, just how much she loved him.   
"Again?" He let her pant a few moments, as all the energy ill placed or otherwise surged through him.   
"Again Geralt." It was a soft nearly dopey smile with an airy chuckle but it was everything to Geralt, it was feeling everything he was fit perfectly with her, was welcomed and loved. 

Anima wasn't going to allow him to have the reigns forever and that was fine too, after she rose and fell a second time under him he was just as eager to have her push at her shoulders. He was giving up the high ground without even thinking because thoughts weren't coming and his head was somewhere soft and warm. "Geralt." All he could hear was his name. "Geralt." All he could feel were her hips sliding into him at a fluid knowing pace, he bucked up to meet her and everything seemed the same but better.   
"Anima I . . ."   
"Let me return the favor Geralt. I want-" Perhaps his fingernails dug in a bit to much, or perhaps he went somehow deeper but she gasped as he let release hit him, they had a matching set of punch drunk grins as she folded in against his chest. "I . . . Still owe you . . .we're not even." She sighed as her face nuzzle into his chest.  
"In a moment Anima." He kissed the top of her head.

"So."  
"Hmm." He'd never been this expectant, this eager for a so. "So what?"  
"Just curious Geralt . . . What do you think today is?"  
"Huh?"  
"You wanted this day . . . _Specifically_ to be . . . Something. Why?"   
"I told you . . . I didn't forget this year."  
"Forget what Geralt?" She sighed as if she was pulling teeth but Geralt didn't quite understand where the miscommunication was.  
"Last year, you did something special, for a year after saying-"  
"Follow up question. Geralt what is the date?"  
"Huh?" His mind was still pleasantly foggy but he was seeing where this was headed. "Well the equinox was a few weeks back. . ." Geralt did not own a calander, days in and of themselves were not important, expecpt for when they needed to be. "It's not . . ." Deductive reasoning finally caught up with all Anima's dim blinks and odd questions. "Wait you got me a gift, what was that for if not some sort of anniversary present?" She had called him a pet name she only saved for special occasions, was she pulling his leg again?  
"We haven't been near a proper bath for a stretch, I wasn't going to have you throw my hard work into a lake Geralt!" The gift was sheer logistics, the name possibly just for the sake of dusting off cob webs.   
"How far off was I?"  
"You were close . . . Three days, I figured it out once _you_ had a gift."  
"And you didn't tell me till now?" She had known his plan and even though it was baseless she had gone along with it.  
"What's the day matter? It's the thought of remembering that counts, it's that you tried. You did remember, you did try, fuck the dates."  
"Trying means the world." She meant it, they weren't just words. "Means I can keep trying for three more days." They were sweaty and in need of a second bath but he turned her all the same.  
"And here I was going to offer to remind you next year."  
"Please . . . This was . . .exhausting."  
"I don't want my vildkarl restless." She reached up and kissed him.  
"It can be three days next year too."

-The void-  
"Anima?" He stopped, he absolutely froze, she was crying. The sound hitting him out of nowhere made his heart race out of rhythm, he was starting to wake and he couldn't fight it.   
"You remembered." It was terribly broken, absolutely crushed.   
"Anima." He was off of her scooping her into a hold that was bordering on crushing.  
"I forgot that you remembered . . . I don't . . .Geralt I didn't remember that. I thought I atleast had most . . .What else have I forgotten? I'm not whole Geralt I-"  
"Do you remember it now?" He brushed his knuckles at the corners of her eyes.  
"Yes." She sniffled a bit.  
"Then I will remind you of everything you've forgotten. You have a flair for amnesia Anima, I've had to remind you my own name before."  
"You . . . Have?" She didn't have even the memory of other times she had forgotten.  
"Yes. I'll remind you of everything till you remember." He brought her face down to his chest, still nothing, still missing her favorite sound, she couldn't hear his heartbeat.   
"I know that I miss it that has to count for . . . Something right?"   
"Counts for everything. Hold onto that Anima. Promise me. It misses you too. We'll find each other I promise." He woke up even less primed for Lyria, he wanted desperately to turn around to forget the notion of killing Nehalenia, he wanted to scower more fairy tale cures to Anima's half dead state. _'I want to be able to . . .'_ He could hear his heart pumping hard in his chest, mockingly loud. _'Any which way. We'll find each other.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this seems like abrupt fluff but it was pretty heavy to start and the next chapter is not particularly a tickle fest, wanted some light in there so it's not angst forever.


	4. Past potions and future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Credit to Lewis Capaldi for the song bruises

"You should . . . I mean you can stay but you probably should go." Fredrick was not the best person to speak to in the matters of emotion.  
"Not the time." He'd been here before, come all the way to Lyria, made it all the way to the hermit's house and not a step further.  
"Wasn't the time last . . . Time." Fredrick wasn't looking at the witcher, struggling desperately to tie laces on the boots of a child that was having none of it. "Sozada stop kicking, you want to go outside and shoes are needed for outside right?"  
"No shoes. Just outside!" The child kicked harder.  
"No shoes no outside." Fredrick retorted.  
"Must be hard." Geralt hadn't meant to say that outloud.  
"What's that?"  
"You don't seem. . . one for children."  
"Well I have one. . . Sozada you can stare through the window. See the outside from the inside if you won't follow the rules." Fredrick gave up on the shoes entirely.  
"Would have been easier with . . ." Geralt's mouth clamped shut, he didn't mean to pry, this wasn't his place.  
"With Sozada?" The child was named after her mother, the one who died bringing her into the world. Monsters killed, there was no monster quite like child birth. The naming likely wasn't done in memorium per se, Fredrick just wasn’t good with names and faces, perhaps it was a trick to make sure he didn't forget. "Probably. Takes a village whatever that means." Fredrick went to the window with his daughter, Fredrick could have a village help him raise this child, Fredrick still had empaths knocking up on his doors to train them yet he had turned every single one down since the death of his wife. "That one's a white tailed eagle bud." He pointed into the distance, Fredrick didn't have a village, he lived on the fringe, that's where he felt comfortable.  
"Can't see it." The girl squinted.  
"Indoors will do that. Should've put on your shoes." Geralt tried to be helpful.  
"Greg will you put me on your shoulders if we go outside?"  
"If you put on shoes." He didn't bother to correct her, it was a family trait. The girl withdrew from the window and went about shoving on shoes.  
"Wasn't the time." Fredrick was still observing the bird. "Right?"  
"Huh?"  
"Sozada died . . . bud was crying . . . Wouldn't stop crying. I didn't get time to . . . Get Sozada's things in order." Fredrick never spoke over grieving his parted lover, or at least not in the way Geralt had heard others grieve, plenty of the woman's things were still strewn around the home. "Had to deal with the crying . . . Even though it was a bad time. Was the right choice, only choice, babies are loud."  
"Hmm." The child didn't warn the witcher was just on him, climbing, untied shoes slipping against his chest, fingers pulling at his hair. "I get it." Geralt had used the excuse of Thom being in poor health and not wanting to burden Thill with such an ask as to why he hadn't gone further into Lyria, didn't go through with the hardship pulling at him. Thom hadn't gotten better, he was worse, was on his death bed, humans were not as resilient as mutants, Lyria had a way of reminding Geralt of that, of the passage of time. It wasn't going to be an easy ask but Geralt had to speak to them, the family that once welcomed him with open arms, the ones who likely hated him for not protecting Anima. He had to do what was hard because it wasn't going away and people needed to heal, cry if need be but he couldn't just ignore it.  
"Get what?" Fredrick was outside already. "Come on." The bird fluttered and left as the door closed behind Geralt.  
"Hmm."

"You don't hate me Fredrick." The witcher stated almost observationaly. "You don't hate anyone do you?"  
"What's it do? Fix anything? Hating people? Loving people? Sozada liked strong emotions, Anima too . . . What's that do for them?" Fredrick almost sounded sad for a moment but Geralt couldn't be sure, witcher's emotions were muted Fredrick's were, different, there surely, just found their way to the surface different. How lonely must this man be? The two people who were able to understand him gone. Yet he went on, more than that he was going on and raising a child best he could.  
"Spin Greg!" The witcher looked up at the girl, she seemed . . . Happy. She was happier when Geralt got about to making circles in his step. Did the girl know what loneliness felt like? She lived in a shack in the woods with her father who while a kind soul and supportive man wasn't exactly warm or open. Did that not matter? Did she not know any better? Or did just enough of her mother she was named after bleed through? Could she understand Fredrick in a way others couldn't.  
"Hmm." Geralt had people alive that understood him he'd just been . . . Busy, too busy for emotions. He'd seen Jaskier twice, the bard hadn't seen him but Geralt had checked in, the man looked . . . Busy. There hadn't been a need to call to the bard. Tell him what? He'd succeeded at nothing? Regressed back into who he was before they met? Worse?

"Counting days, counting days Since my love up and got lost on me.  
And every breath that I've been takin' Since you left feels like a waste on me."  
"Is that?" Geralt stopped spinning and craned his ear. He was imagining things, getting lost in his woes.  
"I've been holding on to hope That you'll come back when you can find some peace.  
Cause every word that I've heard spoken Since you left feels like an hollow street."  
"Sounds like Anima's other friend. He can stay too, but he aught to go." Fredrick's ears caught the second verse. Geralt hadn't been lost in woes, witchers didn't get lost.  
"What is he doing here?" Geralt had a touch and go relationship with destiny, he didn't know what to make of the approaching sounds.  
"Thill likely asked for him. Likely asked for both of you."  
"I've been told, I've been told to get you off my mind.  
But I hope I never lose the bruises that you left behind."  
"Why would she want to see us?"  
"Oh my lord, oh my lord, I need you by my side."  
"To see off Thom in Anima's stead."  
"Spin Greg!" And Geralt was spinning. He couldn't do it. Couldn't face Jaskier, explain that he was not the muse the bard remembered. Couldn't speak to Thill, ask a question no one should ask. What if Thom asked to see him? Wanted to die getting his hatred off his chest. The man was owed that wasn't he? Geralt didn't have words for these people, no action would fix the passage of time.  
 _'You can do anything Geralt.'_ He heard Anima state so confident and sure. He wanted to vomit.

"Have you been holding that face for three years Geralt? That's endurance, even for you." There he was right in front of him, a smile on his face, albeit a cautious one.  
"Jaskier." He took the child off his shoulders placing her onto the grass, not even blinking as she tripped over undone laces. Had it been three years? No, he'd seen Jaskier in Temeria a few months back. _'Hasn't seen me.'_ It had been three years since he left the bard, asked him to do what he couldn’t.  
"Don't spill all your stories all at once Geralt." Jaskier spoke to the silence and the physical distance between them.  
"Hmm." Geralt froze again, failed again, he didn't know what to do.  
"How bout just one?" Jaskier looked nervous, the witcher's silence was getting to him.  
"One?" Geralt tried, he croaked out the question.  
"You were in White Orchard, was it wraiths? Tell me I haven't asked for another story of wraiths."  
"White Orchard." Geralt tried to get the cogs in his head turning. "Was there last spring. How did you know?"  
"Well that's the last time I . . . Or more accurately Eskel got a wiff of you."  
"Eskel . . . You travel with him now?"  
"Not exactly, we meet up now and again. Pestered him into letting me winter in Kaer Morhen last year." There was a pause. "You weren't there." It almost sounded like a question.  
"A griffin." Geralt answered the question asked not the one implied. "Feathers." The bard liked contracts with wings. Part of him ached in a way that was either very old or entirely new he couldn't tell which.  
"Well I've got a few moments, surely long enough for you to tell your poetic rendition of the hunt twice." Jaskier's smile was fuller and Geralt felt that ache he recognized to be old and not new, the want to be close, to feel at home, vein from his chest, through his limbs, up his throat.  
"Nilfgardians had killed it's mate." Geralt turned towards the hut.  
"You have improved!" Jaskier flinched at how tight Geralt's shoulders snapped at those words. "I didn't . . Meant . . . A decade ago I'd have to get you completely faded just to tell me what shade of brown it was."  
"Brought Fredrick a talon if you want to see it." Was this fair? Was he allowed this? To smile and show off? To tell stories and catch up? Anima couldn't do any of those things. Anima was dead, he was alive, that wasn't fair but that was a fact.

"How have you been Anima?" The voice sounded . . . Softer than it had ever been, still superior still snide but Anima could hear between words, the voice was concerned. "You're not dead so I know you can hear me." Nehalenia couldn't hide behind selfish desires, she had everything and Anima was no threat, she was reaching out because even if it was just morbid curiosity at it's base, she cared.  
"Dead enough." Anima was still moving forward, still trying, yet determination had burned down to frustration, even that was leaving, she was bleeding dry, going numb.  
"Alive enough. Don't be ungrateful."  
"To who? You? I'd be nothing without you? Look around . . . Nothing. With you, without, I owe you no debt. I wound up exactly where I . . . " She wound up nowhere, alone, detached, her greatest fear indefinite.  
"Are you giving in? Losing it?"  
 _'It?'_ Anima looked ahead of her, nothing, what was there to lose? She glanced behind her the red streak marking her progress, the bed from oxenfurt, Lambert's alchemy table, Thill's favorite Inn stool. She was being haunted by furniture, almost mocking how alone she was. "No." She was being mocked by memories of people she cared about, people she wanted to return to, she couldn't give up.

"I . . ." Jaskier's fingers were rapping against the table, maybe jittery from the sixth cup of tea he could not refuse, well he had refused yet Fredrick had already been pouring. "Are you staying long Geralt?"  
"No." He had nowhere to be but Lyria wasn't his home, he wasn't meant to stay, he'd made that mistake too many times.  
"Oh." Jaskier nodded. "Would you stay until I come back? I do have to-"  
"No." Geralt watched the bard nod again, grow a bit small in his chair.  
"Geralt I . . . Need to . . . Thill asked for-"  
"I know." He hadn't but Fredrick's hunch had been right. "We can walk together."  
"Really?!" Jaskier looked twenty pounds lighter, all those pounds landed squarely on Geralt's shoulders.  
"It will be some time before I return Fredrick." He'd be run out of the place, bridges already neglected and decayed burning behind him. He'd lose more, he'd thought he had lost enough but the world must've disagreed, thought the witcher had more to give, could bear to lose more.

-The void -

"Are you home sick Anima?"  
"What kind of question is that?" Anima actually stopped in place for the first time in ages.  
"That old brothel owner, he's dying."  
"Old brothel . . ." She remembered his face, had dug up some fond memories of the man who looked at her like . . . A father? "What is his name?" She didn't remember his name. Was she a bad person? Or just an incomplete one? How much of her memories were still missing? Would they ever come back to her.  
"Could ask him yourself."  
"When he . . . Dies?" She should feel sad, she did but then it twisted to something guilty, she wanted someone, anyone to talk to. She could remember that man hugging her, a hug wouldn't go amiss. Geralt found her now and again but those moments were bitter sweet, she loved to see him but he was hurting, each time parting took a bit out of both of them. Did she wish for someone to be trapped with her? This place had turned her mad, had it made her selfish too?  
"I'd like to let you out."  
 _'Did she come here just to mock me? Just to distract me?'_ Anima closed her eyes repeated the sentence over in her head. "Why?" What ifs would just kill her twice over. So even if it was a joke at her expense she went with it.  
"You're my favorite Anima, you've forgotten a lot. Have you forgotten that? You won't last much longer without some stimulation. I've neglected you and I apologize. Though turn about is fair play. I was ignored far longer."  
"You want me to see my father die with my own eyes?" Time was passing, maybe Nehalenia wanted to rub that in her face.  
"It's a gift I wouldn't give another." Allow her to mourn, allow her to feel, it was a gift. A gift wrapped in chicken wire but a gift none the less.  
"Well?" Anima couldn't find it in her to say thank you, to be grateful.

"I thought . . ." Geralt was surprised, not much had changed. The Inn looked the same, smelled the same, he tried to keep his nose off and away from Anima's room which still faintly smelled of her but that was a big ask. Maybe it was a trick of the mind but the patrons almost looked as if they hadn't changed seats since he'd been here last.  
"Thought I was dying?" Thom looked different, looked aged and unwell, had that graying color humans got when ripe turned to rot. "Am." He let out a wet cough, some sort of sick, likely consumption was well and set in his bones. "Part of dying is living though." The man was drinking, not some potion to hold onto vitality, not some broth to fight away illness, the same thing he drank last time the witcher was here, ale. "Well witcher I ain't got new work for you and . . ." The whites of his eyes were yellow, not a good sign, neither was how hard he had to squint to make the observation that should have been clear. "The bard. You alive over there?"  
 _'Why is he . . .'_ Geralt didn't understand why Thom wasn't spitting and cursing at him. Maybe he didn't have the energy? Didn't want to spend breaths not guaranteed telling the witcher what he already knew, he had failed all of them in the worst way imaginable.  
"I am." Jaskier's voice was split between happy and sad, is that what mourning was? A celebration and a depression mixed into one? Geralt couldn't do that, he could only really feel one thing at a time. He used to be able to, when he had Anima to balance him but not in ages, it was one emotion at a time, more often than not it was loss or self loathing.  
"Well? Did the witcher finally break your lute?"  
"No." It was a teary sort of laugh.  
"Same song as last time not so dreary though. Something my girl would have danced to." Thom's words weren't weepy they were . . . The same as they'd been the last time Geralt had seen him. "Well? Not getting any younger."  
 _'Would have.'_ Thom had come to peace with Anima being gone. _'Not getting any younger.'_ Had come to peace with his own mortality. Was the world moving forward and Geralt had stopped? He blinked a bit to see if his eyes were playing tricks on him, had the world changed and he just refused to see it? How was a dying man more alive than a witcher with centuries left?  
"It's . . . A sad song Thom." Jaskier wouldn't turn down the request but he couldn't spin the song happy.  
"Not if you play it faster. Can see her now. She knocked over a full keg of of Rivian Kriek at old man Poldwot's wake. Everyone went from sobbing to laughing just like that!"  
"Hmm." She'd likely done it on purpose, Anima did nearly everything on purpose, she'd turned a funeral into a laughing fit, sounded just like her. "Play it Jaskier?"  
"Yes alright." He couldn't turn these men down, they needed this, needed a memory to cling to. "There must be something in the water.  
Cause everyday it's getting colder." As stated the words were not light ones. Thom had told him it was a song meant for grief, why he asked for camp mixed in the bard didn't quite understand.  
"And if only I could hold you.  
You'd keep my head from going under." Yet he tried, strummed fast and true and hoped his voice didn't crack.  
"Jaskier?" Thill came in from the kitchen, just she used to. Wasn't she a viscountess? What was she doing back at the Inn? Geralt felt he was trapped in some dream but then there was Orwen behind her. Lorna and Benton seemed to appear out of nowhere and they looked different, much taller, less like babes and more like, a lass and a lad, not grown up but grown enough to notice the passage of time.  
"Thill I need-"  
"Witcher hush for a moment . . . Listen will ya?" Thom shouted like he used to loud and lively. Geralt nodded and did as told, listened.  
"Maybe I, maybe I'm just being blinded by the brighter side.  
Of what we had because it's over, well there must be something in the tide." Jaskier's voice did crack, just a bit but no one noted on it, everyone just listened, smiled, for a moment everyone could see Thom spinning Anima around the Inn like he used to.  
"I've been told, I've been told to get you off my mind.  
But I hope I never lose the bruises that you left behind.  
Oh my lord, oh my lord, I need you by my side." The song went on but Jaskier didn't, a moment was what was needed, stretching it further would be cruel.

"So no bruxa here witcher. Why have you come to see us?" Thom took another big drink, gave another awful cough.  
"I . . . Anima. She's . . . Stuck . . . Somewhere I can't get to."  
"Well that's clear or else she'd be here. Doesn't answer my question. Bard told us you went looking for her, would find her, he swore in six different languages. Did you stop? Nowhere left to look?"  
"She's trying to get back. Will keep trying . . . I . . ." Geralt's fists balled. "I want her to keep trying but I don't know . . . If that is selfish of me. If I should . . . Someone suggested it is unfair to her. I should put her . . ."  
"You put her anywhere and I'll put you six feet under myself witcher!" Thom stood and it was a struggle, his body seemed far less passionate about then endeavor than his mind.  
"Thom don't-"  
"No you don't! Witcher hear these words and accept it! She loves you. She left her home to be with you and you know what?"  
"It got her killed. It was my fault." Geralt nodded.  
"Pout to someone with the time for it witcher. She was happy with you wasn't she?"  
"Anima used to say there is no such things as happy days only happy moments. She'd start-"  
"Break open the word? Suck all meaning out of it?" Thom chuckled. "Told her I was fatigued once! Tired before? After she was done with me. Ah you can do it!" Thom grinned at the smile he pulled from the witcher. "Janis come look. Get to see a proper wolf grin before I go!" Thom called for his wife. She came from behind the bar and as she put her hands on her husband's shoulders she was smiling too.  
"I don't . . ." Geralt took a step or two back. "You're not supposed to be smiling."  
"What you want me to fold my arms cross my chest and wait for the flies?" Thom snorted.  
"No I . . . You're supposed to hate me." Geralt growled, he didn't want to be hated but that's what he deserved, what made sense.  
"Geralt-" Jaskier started but Thom was short on time he wasn't giving up the stage.  
"And I suppose I do. Ain't that big a man to forgive the fact it's your sorry face I'm looking at and not my girl's." Thom nodded. "Want to do right by her and . . . She always . . . She held you high Geralt."  
"I know." He'd dropped her from such a hight, the fall killed her. She was still . . . Around but she had no claim over a body, dead was the best way to describe her state.  
"She was a fair one . . . Even when being fair made her cross."  
"Balanced." Geralt nodded.  
"For all the times you saved us . . . She'd find it fitting to save you."  
"Save me?" He didn't need saving, he was alive, in decent health, he should be the one saving, that was what he was built for. He would've have respectfully waited for Thom's answer but then Geralt's nose caught something that even a dying man's words could not keep his attention off. "Can't be." It was coming from outside.  
"Geralt?" Thill shouted as the wolf ran from the Inn.  
"I'll . . ." Jaskier gave an apologetic bow. "This is hard for him to . . . Understand."  
"We're here for him. . . He knows that right?" Thill's smile hadn't aged at all it was just as persistent and almost unreasonably perky.  
"No." Jaskier knew the witcher too well to lie convincingly. "Be patient?" Jaskier was backing towards the door.  
"Time isn't what we have a lot of." Thom sat back down. "Wrangle the man will you? I'm trying to get through to him."  
"Yes I-" Jaskier whipped open the door. "Shit." This was bad. "Be . . . Very patient and . . . Perhaps bolt the door . . . To be on the safe side."  
"Jaskier what is-"  
"Do not open this door Thill . . . Whatever you do. Swear on Anima you won't."  
"Jaskier you're-"  
"Swear! It will . . . Please."  
"Well make work of it then! These doors haven't staid closed since the last vampire left Lyria and I won't close up shop today." Old age had made Thom impatient.

"What are you doing here?" Geralt snarled, that scent was imistakable, had lost most of the dried fruit, likely less jam in her diet yet tea leaves remained.  
"Thought you'd be more happy to see this face witcher." The face was wrong though, the eyes at least, had that green glow washing out what should be white.  
 _'Nehalenia.'_ This was his chance. It could be years until he got another.  
 _'You should be fucking trying to kill the bitch wearing her skin!'_ Lambert's call to arms shouted between Geralt's ears.  
 _'Really . . . Made it her own.'_ Anima had kept her hair long and loose, Geralt always found a good hiding spot in it, Nehalenia had the hair cropped short, choppy almost challenging someone to be able to find a grip in it. _'Anima would . . . Like what she did with it.'_ Not her hair but Nehalenia had fashioned the white wolf pelt given to Anima as a gift years ago into a vest, with a proper hood, It looked practical, looked warm. ' _It'll be cold in Aretuza, surrounded by water. I won't be there to keep you warm. Doesn't mean anything but a white wolf should.'_ His hand went to reach for a sword, steel for man, silver for monsters what worked on a goddess?  
"How are you feeling witcher? Holding up? You can't go and die you know. You have to stay alive."  
"W . . . Why do you care if I live or die?" Nehalenia cared about Anima in her own perverse way, she'd been very cut and dry about her distaste for the witcher. _'Still barefoot.'_ He wondered if she had even bothered to clean Anima's boots of her blood. He stopped wondering about arbitrary things, when he felt a squeeze and flutter in his chest. Anima had promised not to tether to Geralt, gods didn't make promises.  
"You can't be that bright." Nehalenia was searching for something but not finding it. What? What could be beyond her view? "Crafty and cruel Anima. You're both bull headed, in her it's charming in you . . . It's a hindrance witcher."  
"She . . . Is she hurting? She dances around it . . . When I see-" He hadn't gotten much better at dreaming, only gotten to her a few times, they were dreams, Anima pretended everything was alright.  
"Every moment of everyday witcher. She's in a constant state akin to drowning. Is that straight forward enough for you? Will that compel you to release it?"  
"It?" He pulled out steel, that was still Anima's body, and he knew it had no reaction one way or another to silver. "She's not an it." He'd release Anima, set her free. Thom didn't understand, he didn't have to, he'd get to see his girl again soon, maybe Geralt could try the necromancer again. He charged, swung, his eyes poped surprised as his blade met . . . It was Anima's cleaver, her steel, weilded well, as they traded blows it became apparent, Lambert's lessons on dodging mixed with Nehalenia's better understanding of battle made this a match not a mercy killing.  
"I do not view her as an object witcher. She is my favorite, and I hate what you've done to her. That you've burned what she gave you. It's all ash now, can't see the forest for the trees."  
"Burned?"  
"Geralt? Geralt what is this? What's happening?" Jaskier was barreling towards the dueling duo.  
"Bardling. Have you at least missed me?" The diety gave an almost dainty wave with her free hand.  
"Jaskier stay back!" Geralt could at least sigh relieved that the bard had learned to listen a bit better.  
"Geralt you've done this before. Don't scar her again. Don't-"  
"Things have changed Jaskier!" They had, time had passed, humans had aged, the world had not stopped at Anima's parting. Geralt had to stop acting like that was the case.  
"Not for her. Have it Witcher. For a second understand what you're putting her through."  
"Alone." He froze, again in a moment to be good for Anima he froze. "Stuck." He watched as she leisurely walked past him. "Sad." Her least favorite emotions.  
"Depression. It's one of the stages of grief. The stage you two miserable idiots won't pass through. Perhaps some home will help her move to the next stage?" He used to have Anima to help guide him through emotions, he hadn't had that in years.  
"What's the . . ." There was another feeling, a strong feeling. "Next stage?" Tired, he felt tired all over, deep in his bones, maybe he could sleep. He hadn't slept right in weeks. Perhaps he could dream? See her? He hadn't seen her in months.  
"Acceptance." She spoke as the witcher fell for Anima's oldest trick, least the empath was kind enough to employ it in beds, Nehalenia had the witcher snoozing into soil. "You've been a bad friend Bardling." Nehalenia shook her head, clicked her tounge.  
"Bad-"  
"Only when it suits? Only when it makes for a happy ending? Only for heroics and gold? Go with your wolf." The bard fell as well. "Leaning on them is your biggest fault Anima. Once you learn that . . . Really get it maybe you'll get somewhere."

-The void-  
"The fuck is happening?" Anima spun in place, there was a floor beneath her. "The fuck is happening?" There were walls in front of her, the space was no longer endless it was enclosed. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? Was Nehalenia boxing her in? Was there an escape? Anima looked up. "Tall fucking ceilings!" She knew this place, her head fought to catch up. "Kaer Morhen!" It was her place in the void, where she could go and not drift. Everything came back all at once every memory, every part of her that had been cast across nothing became solid, became tangible, found it's way home. "Geralt?" She felt it, close, that little part of her emotional being she'd sewn away in the witcher, it was so very close. "Geralt?!" She called out his name but go no answer. She thought she heard it, that heartbeat, she scrambled to the door and rattled at a rusted handle it wasn't budging. She kept remembering, why this place was her mental safe space. ' _Home'_ she remembered home, she had more than one. _'Thom.'_ She remembered his name.

-The Physical-  
"Not everything." The sick man coughed. "Not everything's a competition witcher. Don't have to beat me to the grave."  
"Where is she?!" Geralt sat up in an absolute terror, reaching out for a sword that wasn't there. _'This bed.'_ He knew this room, this bed, it had been Anima's.  
"Lay back down." It was Thill's daughter holding out a tankard in somewhat shaky hands. She hadn't seen a witcher up close in years, must've been a bit of a fright.  
"Jaskier . . . The bard . . . Where is he?"  
"Snoring . . . Or . . . Humming? It was kind of funny, a song for you." No surprise, near all of Jaskier's song were for the witcher that didn't apreciate them. "You don't snore Geralt." It was a bit surprising hearing her call him by name. Then he thought about it, not so odd, Thill and Orwen had likely spoken of him by name, not witcher, not wolf. Lyria recalled him differently from the rest of the continent.  
"Light sleeper." Geralt made a bid to stand. "Thom I-"  
"I'm dying Geralt." The Inn owner only used his name when he was gravely serious, it didn't get more grave than this.  
"Yes." The witcher didn't have words, didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry." He was, if there was something the witcher could do he would but there was no fountain of youth and his track record showed, he had little luck raising the dead. "I know a priestess in Ellander it won't-"  
"See that's your problem."  
"Hmm?"  
"Don't know when to give up."  
"I . . . If I don't push I die." Geralt gave a shrug of an explanation.  
"No ones saying don't push. Saying move forward. Move on."  
"You mean-"  
"I'm dying, I'd never want Janis to poision my ale to help me along, nor do I want her to be burried with me. Only thing that hurts worse than the cough . . . Is thinking she'll waste away after me."  
"I . . . You want me to forget about Anima."  
"Did I say I wanted Janis to sell the Inn move to Toussaint and find a swarthy wine merchant with a thick mustache?"  
"No." Not forget . . . Just live without, go on living.  
"You and this mustache." Lorna seemed to roll her eyes as if it was a true point of contention.  
"My biggest regret. Never could grow one. Besides the point, don't distract me child. Maybe after a while I'd like her to. Want her to be happy. Live well, tears and prayers won't bring me back."  
"Hmm." Geralt understood what Thom was saying but there was a distinct difference. Thom would be at peace, Anima wasn't, she was in pain, a constant state of drowning.  
"She doesn't want you to be collared by her Geralt." Thill entered the room. They were right, she would want him to live for himself not just to bring her back.  
 _'You are not a plaything Geralt, not a pet or a puppet.You are not a weapon, You are not a vessel for my whims. A person Geralt. Your own person.'_ He could easily hear her speaking. _'Wait . . . Collared that's Anima's. . .'_ The handle to the tankard snapped in his hold. "Doesn't? She was . . . You . . . I missed her." Geralt's heart stalled out, he felt crushed and cold all over.  
"Only for a moment . . . She . . . Said. . ." Thill's smile vanished, her mouth clamped shut.  
"Let her keep trying . . . She's got nothing else she can do and my girl is tenacious." Thom cautioned, he did not want Geralt to try and kill her, posion her ale.  
"What did she say Thill, tell me exactly what she said."  
"She said she was running out. . ."  
"Of time." Colder, Geralt felt colder.  
"You have tried everything you could Geralt. She knows this. Go on and be the man she's trying to get to."  
"Hmm." He could do that, just one problem. ' _All but one thing. I've tried everything but one. Last promise to break. She's running out of time.'_ Geralt stood, found his pack and rummaged through his things, returning to Thom with a vial in his hands. "One of the last ones I have left." It was one of Anima's potions, he only had a few lasting bottles all of which he was holding for an emergency not for sentimental value, witchers weren't sentimental.  
"A witcher potion?" Thom looked at Geralt a bit confused. "Already dying. You trying to kill me?"  
"She didn't just brew for my battles. If it was in a book and she had the means she'd mix it. Finally found herself a trade . . . A passion."  
"She did." Thom took the glass and held it at his chest smiling, his girl had something that was hers that was all he had ever wished for her. "What's it do? Make me jump higher? Breathe fire?"  
"Clay, Alma seeds, lemon and endra eggs." Geralt remembered the ingredients.  
"Means fuck all to me witcher." Thom shrugged.  
"Means you might get your mustache. Stimulates hair growth." What hair growth emergency Geralt had been waiting three years to happen he couldn't say, he figured he could risk parting with it.  
"Granting a dying man's wish! My girl, see witcher, she always finds a way!" Thom laughed, they all laughed, even Geralt chuckled, he was allowed to laugh, allowed to live, he had to, the dead moved slow, he couldn’t be slow, she was running out of time.

  
"Geralt!" Fredrick had stampeded into the room.  
"Greg!" A shoeless Sozada over his shoulders.  
"Yes? Is . . . Everything alright?"  
"No. No it's not alright. . . You're still here. I mean I suppose you can stay but you aught to go."  
"Fredrick we've already had this conversation. I'm here. I've . . . Gotten the answer I needed." He would not put Anima out of her misery, it wasn't his to dictate, he wouldn't add to it, wouldn't let his own be what she reached out to.  
"I need something. I don't . . . I thought I had all I needed . . . I don't. You have to get it for me. Bring it back, don't forget this time. You forget us all the time. We need-"  
"Fredrick what do you need me to fetch? I will go this moment and find it, you've been patient." He looked around the room. "You've all been . . . The bard will say it better when he wakes."  
"Bohun Upas."  
"You . . . Want me to bring you a tree?"  
"Well unless you fight Manticore regularly. . . . Do you fight manticore regularly? A copious amount of manticore venom would work better . . . Otherwise yes . . . I need the sap from Bohun Upas. I'd like the seeds as well, grow my own, have a steady supply then. It is imperative Geralt I need-"  
"Why do you need it? Why now? Did . . . After I passed out what did she-"  
"Who?" Fredrick looked at him slightly baffled.  
"Red head." His daughter offered.  
"Oh yes. Anima or . . . Nehalenia . . . Whoever she was in the minute. She-"  
"In the minute? Think hard Fredrick. What color were her eyes. This is important." Geralt had the man by the collar, of course it would be the hermit who didn't remember faces he'd have to rely on.  
"Eyes. . . Eyes . . . I don't know. Was more focused on her words. She needed a potion made."  
"Hmm." Then it wasn't Anima, she could make any potion, from hair growth to healing she wouldn't ask Fredrick to make her something. "For what?"  
"I didn't ask." Fredrick didn't lie, didn't omit, stretching the truth was beyond him.  
"I will bring you what you need. When you make it for her ask . . . Send a raven for me. Can you do that Fredrick?" He would keep tabs on Nehalenia, he would only fight her if she became a threat.  
"I can. Sozada remind me."  
"Send bird to Greg." The child nodded.  
"Hmm." Geralt turned away before he got unwarantedly frustrated with those trying their best. "Thom . . . Came here in Anima's stead . . . I know you got the genuine article but . . ." The witcher stepped forward a bit awkward.  
"Come here you old dog." His arms felt the same, this hug felt the same as others before it, except there was a difference, it was the last of it's kind.  
"Thank you. For all that you've done. You . . . Raised her well I know I-"  
"The bard will say it better won't he?" Thom let go.  
"He will." Geralt failed again but it didn't freeze him.  
"Good luck Witcher, when she comes back, it's you that's gotta look after her you understand?"  
 _'When.'_ Did Geralt have hope left? Or had he soured so far there was none left, Anima said he was the embodiment of it, he still was flesh, still made of bone, so there had to be some. "Good luck to you too Thom. I do not pray but I will . . . They say good deeds win favor in places of after don't they?"  
"They do." Thom nodded.  
"Then if I do any good, I defer the favor to you."  
"You don't need any for yourself?"  
"I do best with bad odds. Favor doesn't suit my fight."  
"Then I will take it." Thom sounded oddly . . . Content with those words. Maybe Geralt still had a few left.  
"Shouldn't you wait for Jaskier?" Thill offered.  
"I aught to go." Some but not many, he'd borrow Fredrick's


End file.
